Lily Dunn

Wild Women Writers Salon 21: Writing Memoir as Resistance & Reclamation Dig deep into writing memoir, with host Victoria Bennett, & guest authors Elissa Altman, Lily Dunn, Catherine Simpson, and Susanna Crossman

Am doing a Wild Women Writers Salon about memoir as resistance and reclamation Thursday, Feb 26 from 8 pm to 9:30 pm CET, alongside the brilliant @lilydunn.bsky.social @elissaaltman.bsky.social and Catherine Simpson. Please join us !

www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/wild-women...

In January I was privileged to host @lilydunn.bsky.social for our monthly @womenwritersnet.bsky.social #AuthorInterview. Lily spoke about her new book, #IntoBeing. Access the interview, and discover why I can't recommend the book strongly enough, in the blog post below! @manchesterup.bsky.social

Thank you Valeria! Look forward to reading

Following Chloe Hadjimatheou’s exposé of The Salt Path in the Observer, I will be in discussion with Chloe and Julian Baggini at Julian's Philosophy salon in Bristol on Sunday 22 Feb at 4:30pm. Does truth matter in this case and others? www.stgeorgesbristol.co.uk/whats-on/phi...

If you read one thing today... aeon.co/essays/sure-...

Loved doing this! Thank you 🤩

Oh amazing. I’m setting myself the challenge to write a UTM memoir in five months. I’ll look forward to reading this

Thanks to all those who followed our #WomenWritersNet live #AuthorInterview with the amazing @lilydunn.bsky.social tonight. Lily spoke about her latest book, #IntoBeing (@Manchesterup.bsky.social), and about her approach to #memoirwriting. If you couldn’t attend, catch up on the whole thread here!

This is so motivating: "Think small--build up from there." The best defence against the blank page! #WomenWritersNet #WritingCommunity #Memoir

It was such a pleasure. Such clever questions. I feel inspired now to go write! (after my supper)

Thank you! The dog is real

It's great. Not available as a book in the UK yet, but audio you can get.

Thank you. I will. I need to use Bluesky more!

Listen to the audio of this - www.amazon.co.uk/Permission-N...

Keep writing. Share what you write - see that it resonates. Talk to other writers. Sometimes the things we hold closest are not actually that shameful. Talk to the people you are afraid to hurt. My mother said my memoir made us closer because she could understand things from my POV. Trust this.

This is right, because you're sitting with the work that much longer. So much of writing in my experience is giving yourself up to the writing. The critical voices or all the reasons you shouldn't be doing it, or you're doing it wrong, can be the biggest villan.

It comes back to the 'noticing self'

I am still doing a lot of publicity around the book. I will be teaching an in person workshop in Bristol at end of Feb and will be in an event with writer @richbeard.bsky.social in Oxford in April. My website does not have up to date events, but you can contact me through my Substack.

And a Dog | Dr Lily Dunn | Substack I am an incurable memoir addict. I love reading it, teaching it, and writing it. Here you will find stories from a life, but you will also learn how to write it, and how memoir can be transformative b...

Well. I am on Substack a lot, and teach monthly workshops for my paid subscribers. lilydunn.substack.com

Yes! And my chapter on voice is one of the last chapters because it took me multiple drafts to find the guiding thread, or the holder of the threads as I articulate it, to pull all the disparate parts together. I think this is also linked to permission - that you have a right to your story.

I teach this a lot. 'moments' are the best defence against the blank page. Think small - build up from there. But by 'moments' I mean those memories that have their claws in you because something was revealed or something was learned. it could be something small like witnessing a raindrop on a leaf.

This also comes back to writing the first draft before working out the structure. Give it a chance to breathe on its own.

Often memoir writers find the shape follows the story you have to tell, specific to you the person telling the story. This can only really be worked out through the writing itself. ‘I write to find out what I am thinking,’ Joan Didion wrote. Almost as if writing has a heart and soul of its own.

Yes, exactly this

Be courageous and believe in your book. It helps if it has a universal message and the potential to resonate with people outside of your personal story. Then you can reassure yourself that the book must be published! You also have to have faith. Sometimes you have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

I wanted Into Being to be a platform for writers publishing in the UK because most books on memoir are published in the US. The writers I spoke to were hugely inspirational and also showed me there were many universals in our experience, particularly the transformative potential of memoir.

A3 #WomenWritersNet #AuthorInterview

This is great #WritingAdvice, particularly for #Memoir #Writing, but also for any writing you want to do.

Reflexivity is a concept of Celia Hunt, who used to run an MA in writing and self development. It's about being both inside and outside the experience at the same time. being able to touch the nerve and stand back from it and embrace the readers experience. I think all writing needs to achieve this.

Emotional detachment was important to me because of the story I was writing, about a father who was a patriarchal character, and I needed to have detachment to find my authority. Not all writers feel this. Some want to write from within the nerve of experience.