Author Conversation with Susan Wittig Albert

Post #29 – Women’s Memoirs, Author Conversations – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler

“I’ve been a scribbling woman for practically my whole life,” said Susan Wittig Albert. Although our conversation with Susan centered on the questions from visitors to this site, we did get to ask some of our own. Kendra, for instance, asked Susan when she first knew she wanted to be a writer. It seems it all began when she was nine years old with the writing of her first novel — hand lettered on 15 pages that Susan had carefully folded and sewn into a book. Then by the age of 12, Susan knew she either wanted to be Nancy Drew or Carolyn Keene. And for Susan, this wasn’t just an idle dream. She did grow up to become Carolyn Keene–writing Nancy Drew case files in the 1980s.

All of this was prelude to questions about Susan’s new book Together, Alone: A Memoir of Marriage and Place and her experiences concerning:

1. Value of journaling
2. Differences between journaling and writing memoir
3. Use of segments from journals in a memoir
4. Susan’s soon-to-be-published journal-book
5. Usefulness of writing short essays in preparation for a memoir
6. Integration of sense of place in memoir
7. When to write a memoir
8. Marketing memoirs
9. And much more.

Listen now to Susan Wittig Albert:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

If you missed her guest blog and writing prompt, CLICK HERE.

If you’d like to see the womensmemoirs.com review of Susan Wittig Albert’s memoir, CLICK HERE.

Tagged as: Book Marketing, Journaling, memoir publishing, Personal History