SEPT OCT 2019 664200 54th Avenue South, St. Petersburg, Florida 33711JANUARY 18-25, 2020
16 TH ANNUAL CONFERENCE
WORKSHOPS IN CRIME & SUSPENSE,
NARRATIVE SUSPENSE, MEMOIR,
CREATIVE NONFICTION, NOVEL,
POETRY, STRUCTURE, SHORT STORY,
FLASH FICTION AND SCREENWRITING.
FACULTY AND LECTURERS INCLUDE:
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John Dufresne, Stephanie Elizondo Griest,
Ann Hood, Ashley M. Jones, Michael Koryta,
Dennis Lehane, Laura Lippman, Peter Meinke,
Stewart O’Nan, Greg Pardlo, Les Standiford,
Helen Pruitt Wallace, Sterling Watson,
agent Ann Rittenberg and editor George Gibson.
DOZENS OF FELLOWSHIPS AND
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August 1–November 1
FOR MORE INFORMATION
writersinparadise.com or [email protected]
“THE SUNSHINE CITY”I
, Sarah Monique, am a haunted
house.” Those were the first words
I wrote toward my book, when I was
seventeen years old, a freshman at
the University of North Texas. I could
not know then that it would take me
nearly two decades to figure out what,
exactly, I meant and that some of those
ideas would compose my first book.
Writing now about the experience of
making this book feels like catching
grain through spread fingers—almost
but not quite like magic, since we know
the best writing work is the hardest
labor. It is still painful to remember
much of it. To note all of the things
that no one told me before I plunged:
the tarrying loneliness of making a
book; the confidence that waxes and
wanes (mostly wanes); and the urgent
matter of finding one’s tribe, so that
when you realize the vast distance
between starting and finishing and
threaten to quit they can remind you
that James Baldwin said, “Deep water
and drowning are not the same thing.”
In the years following the writing
of that initial sentence, my thinking
about my childhood home expanded to
include the street that the house sat on,
and the neighborhood, New Orleans
East, to which the house belonged. In
2005, after Hurricane Katrina, every-
thing I thought I knew about the story
shifted. Suddenly I was writing about
the physical absence of my main char-
acter, the house, which changed the
texture of the work. “Can I resurrect a
house with words?” I wrote in my note-
book. Six years
after Katrina,
in 2011, after so
many rejections
I stopped count-
ing, I signed a
book deal with
Grove. The
large majority
of publishers
who passed felt
the book should
be about my
family or NewNONFICTION 2019SARAH M.
BROOM
The Yellow House (Grove Press,
August), a debut memoir about the in-
exorable pull of home and family, set
in a neglected New Orleans neighbor-
hood where the author grew up with
eleven siblings; a multigenerational
examination of place, class, race,
inequality—and love and survival.
Agent: Jin Auh. Editor: Amy Hundley.
First lines: “From high up, fifteen
thousand feet above, where the aerial
photographs are taken, 4121 Wilson
Avenue, the address I know best, is
a minuscule point, a scab of green.
In satellite images shot from higher
still, my former street dissolves into
the toe of Louisiana’s boot. From this
vantage point, our address, now mite
size, would appear to sit in the Gulf of
Mexico. Distance lends perspective,
but it can also shade, misinterpret.
From these great heights, my brother
Carl would not be seen.” adamshemper