Everything is connected…
I am an African-American writer and editor whose work is rooted in reality while featuring humorous and bizarre elements that attempt to illustrate the often outer-worldly aspects of the human experience. I am fascinated by the ways trauma drama shapes us, our breakdowns, breakthroughs, and breaking dawns, and the ways we use words for emotional survival.
As the founder and editor-in-chief of Memoir Magazine and the creator of the annual Memoir Prize for Books, I am devoted to cultivating spaces where the fusion of creativity and social justice is possible. Born in the rural American south and raised in Brooklyn by my father’s Trinidadian immigrant family, I am a multilingual world citizen who has lived and worked in more than 200 international cities, and it is this unique perspective that shapes my work.
I am an experiential, immersive, and perceptual memoir writer. Like a method actor, my process involves immersing myself so emotionally into the subject matter that the writing is almost a byproduct of the work, be it the experience one of immigration, race, womanhood, or otherwise.
My writing often explores the interconnections of history, biography, and society, while focusing on the fantastical and surreal elements and characters in everyday life to illustrate how history and the lived life collide and intertwine, with all the extraordinary within the harshness and gentleness of the ordinary. The results on paper can look like magical realism, only because the reality of lived Blackness involves so much extraordinary that is simply an accepted part of the fabric of everyday life. And the emotional truth is stranger still, often revealing deeper universal truths about human existence.
And it is these universal truths about the intersections of Blackness, Womanhood, and Girlhood that I seek to excavate through my work: the wickedness we endure, just trying to live and be loved; The ways we have had to hide our brilliance in order to survive and the ways we reinvent ourselves for emotional survival.
A Book Coach and Amherst Writers and Artists Workshop facilitator, my essay collection “The Black Memoirs Matter Anthology” and my debut memoir “The Secret Life of Grownups” about what life is really like on planet earth for little Black girls who will not be tamed, and who don’t understand why the truth doesn’t actually set anyone free, and what happens when generations of women are silenced and unprotected are currently being evaluated for representation/publication, while I work on my second memoir “Perfect” about leaving behind teenaged homelessness in New York City and going on to work 12 years as a fashion model in Italy.
My short-form memoirs and personal essays have appeared or are forthcoming in: *82 Review, Argot Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, Cobalt Review, Awakened Voices, and others. I live with my husband and dog in Durham, North Carolina.
www.MemoirMag.com, www.Marymcbeth.com.