“Micro-memoirs,” says author Beth Ann Fennelly, “aren’t slivers of a bigger creation. They don’t depend on the others to make sense. But my hope is that, as the book progresses, the pieces grow into a composite, each piece adding color to the portrait of a woman, each helping answer the question: how are we shaped by and through our relationships?” Anyone who has read Heating and Cooling or, more recently, The Irish Goodbye, will understand exactly what Fennelly means. These collections of micro-memoirs take the lyrical complexity and economy of poetry along with the momentum of narrative prose to create gorgeous individual pieces and a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. Good Contrivance Farm is thrilled to have Fennelly, an accomplished poet, fiction writer, and micro-memoirist, to teach a (sold out!) workshop on the form and to give a talk that is free and open to the public.
Beth Ann Fennelly was Poet Laureate of Mississippi from 2016-2021, and she teaches in the MFA Program at the University of Mississippi. A contributor to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Esquire and other outlets, she lives with her husband, Tom Franklin, and their three children in Oxford, MS.
She was kind enough to answer some questions – and readers can hear from her in person on July 25!
Q: How did you discover the micro-memoir form?
I began writing tiny things after I co-wrote a novel with my husband. After that high-stakes, pressure-filled project, it felt good just to write little snatches of memory or bits of overheard conversations, what have you. I was waiting for these little things to “add up.” They didn’t. Initially, when I began experimenting and playing, I didn’t even recognize what I was writing was a form. Finally I hit on the term “micro-memoir,” which allowed me to acknowledge I was writing something new to me.
When I realized I was writing a whole collection of these micro-memoirs, I identified my goals. First, I wanted each piece to get in and get out fast; to sculpt a world in as little ink as I could. Second, I wasn’t interested in creating fragments, pieces that rely on others to make sense. I wanted each to be its own thing—a very small thing, yes, but not an incomplete thing. Third, even though I was working with the building block of the sentence, I wanted the book to have some physical variation, so the pieces don’t look identical and the rhythms of the collection (for a reader who reads straight through) would have the rhythms of a piece of music, say. Fourth, I wanted the collection to feel expansive and diverse in terms of mood or tone, so that while individual pieces might capture just one emotion—humor or sadness or wistfulness or what have you—there would be many different emotions represented, so in that way, the book would attempt to capture the fullness of the human experience. I suppose that sounds a little highfalutin’. What I mean is that I wanted to write the most me into the book that I could; I wanted to write the me-est book possible.
Q: What do you love about it?
When we think of who is worthy of writing their memoirs—who has a big story to tell—maybe we think about following the exploits of a scandalous movie star or world-shaping politician. Instead, for me, the micro-memoir illuminates the workings of that miraculous muscle, an average-sized human heart. I’m interested in the often-overlooked moments that shape a life, whether moving or perplexing or troubling or gladdening. My roles as a wife and mother and resident of a small Mississippi town found expression in these pieces—some as short as a sentence. I hope to dignify the diminutive through the act of attention, capturing the interstitial interactions—encounters with strangers, quirky observations, unexpected flights of fancy—that make up a richly-lived life.
Q: In the workshop you are offering at Good Contrivance Farm, you will talk about “How to Distill Your Life into a Flash.” Could you give us a taste of what you will share with students?
The Irish Goodbye: Micro-Memoirs validates the connections we make with each other. It was fun to write. It is fun to read from. It’s a form that is fun to teach—incredibly user-friendly. I’ve introduced micro-memoir to children, to seniors, to everybody in-between. Because they are seemingly low-stakes and have an element of fun to them, they are unintimidating to try, even for less-experienced writers. Our main strategy will be this: start small.
Our spirit animal for this class will be the hummingbird. The hummingbird is the only bird that can fly forward, backward, sideways, and, for short distances, upside down. Precisely because they are so small, hummingbirds can do things other birds can’t do. In this class, we’ll look at tiny texts and study the things that they can do because they are small. How can attention to the tiniest literary creations challenge and inspire us? How can writing small trick us into writing our big stories?
Q: You will be giving a talk on July 25 that is free and open to the public. Can we get a teaser?
Yes, I’ll be talking on this: “Stranger on a Plane: Establishing Effective Voice Almost Immediately.”
When someone sits down next to us on a plane and begins talking, we quickly evaluate—do we wish to talk with this person, or is it time to insert the ear buds? In the same manner, when we read the opening paragraph of a novel, story or memoir, we’re quickly evaluating whether the piece is worthy of our time, based on voice. We’ll look at several different opening paragraphs (without outside knowledge of author/title) to appreciate how quickly an effective voice may be created. Our goal will be to sharpen skills we can apply to our own opening paragraphs—so when we send a piece to an editor, they know not to put in the ear buds: they’ve found a voice worth listening to.
Q: What other writers who are working in micro forms do you recommend?
For my short pieces, I claim American fiction writers Lydia Davis and Stuart Dybek for how they demand reader participation, the warmth and humanity of Kobayashi Issa’s haiku, and Sei Shonagon’s one-thousand-year-old The Pillow Book, with its unexpected lists and whimsical tonal shifts. Current writers of short-form nonfiction I admire include Abigail Thomas and Ross Gay.
