personal essay

A Conversation with Sari Botton

There are a few women on my radar who are spearheading a reinvention of the way we talk about personal narrative and memoir—and Sari Botton is one of them. She is a seasoned editor and the author of the memoir And You May Find Yourself... Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo.

In our conversation below, we discuss everything from the ethics of memoir and how to navigate writing about other people to how different editors define what an essay is. She raises some revolutionary points about owning our stories and the kind of language we permit ourselves to use in describing them.


 

SARI BOTTON is the author of the memoir-in-essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo. She is a contributing editor and columnist at Catapult, the former Essays Editor for Longreads, and a former columnist for the Rumpus, where she interviewed established and new writers from Cheryl Strayed to Samantha Irby.

Sari edited the New York Times-bestselling Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. Her work has appeared in the New York TimesNew York Magazine, the Village VoiceHarper's BazaarMarie ClaireMore, and the Rumpus.

In addition to teaching creative nonfiction at Bay Path University and Catapult, Sari is the publisher and editor of three Substack publications: Oldster MagazineAdventures in Journalism, and Memoir Monday

 

KARIN GUTMAN: You’ve written about how you’ve navigated writing about other people, as well as interviewing authors about this thorny topic in your Rumpus column Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me.
 
How did you handle this issue with your memoir And You May Find Yourself?

 
SARI BOTTON: When it came time to actually write my book, I realized I needed to first write a vomit draft, what I call a ‘warts and all’ vomit draft with everything in it. All the bad stuff. And then once it was out of my body, out of my head on the page, only then could I blur, subtract and edit.
 
I did it. I handed in the book. That book was edited.
 
And then I went back to my editor, and I said, You know what? I have to do that again. I’ve got to do another level of extraction. I said, I'm not going to get to publish my book in 2021. It's going to be 2022. And she said, Fine. So, I went back and scrubbed it of any unnecessary, inflammatory details. I further blurred people. 
 
KARIN:  Do you feel like these changes diluted the story at all?
 
SARI:  It's still to me all true. I changed so many identifying characteristics. I really did my best to make it so that if one of these awful people who I dated read it, they'd know it was them but nobody else would know unless they already knew the story. I tended to only change your name if you were a jerk. I showed the people I care about the pieces they were in, and said, Is this okay with you? How do you want me to refer to you? Do you want me to change your name?
 
KARIN:  The ethics of memoir are deeply personal. Given how challenging these lines are for you, did you ever consider fictionalizing your story?
 
SARI:  You should write fiction because you're interested in fiction and the art and mechanics of it, not because you're trying to avoid getting in trouble for writing about your life. People will see right through that. I have an idea for a novel and a list of ideas for short stories. But I want to do those things because I want to play God with characters who do interesting things, not because I want to write a story about my relationship with people in my life in a way that they will not recognize themselves, because that's impossible.
 
KARIN:  What about a pseudonym?
 
SARI:  I created a pseudonym for myself. She has a Gmail and a Twitter account. There were a few reasons I didn't publish under that name. One is that I would be really pissed off; I have spent more than 30 years building my platform. For me to then have to hide behind a pseudonym and build that pseudonym’s platform… I wasn't up for that. There’s just something about needing to own my personal story.
 
KARIN:  Can you give an example of how you handled some of the more incendiary material?
 
SARI:  There's a piece in the book about my struggle with body image and weight and eating disorders. In the ‘warts and all’ vomit draft version, a relative makes a comment on my butt when I'm seven, and it completely traumatizes me.
 
I revised that chapter to say that “the adults around me” were really to blame. I realized that my babysitters were on diets. My teachers were on diets and made comments about their bodies and other kids’ bodies. My aunts, my uncles. My grandparents were on the Pritikin Diet, and we all knew about it. It really was the culture. 
 
So, I pulled back on my book to the point where I could make the stories, especially the most difficult ones, about cultural phenomena. Yeah, that relative was a big part of it, but it wasn't necessary for this particular story.
 
KARIN:  In the introduction you write that the purpose of this book is to say simply, “I was here, I lived.” I found that refreshing.
 
You also refer to the series of essays as “confessional” which I find can be used to describe memoir in a derogatory way. What does that word mean to you?
 
SARI:  A lot of the rules of memoir, and of all writing, were written by straight white men.
 
I just read one of Annie Ernaux’s books, and it was 60 pages. She calls herself an “Ethnographer of the Self.” I love that she won the Nobel Prize for that work, and I am all for ethnography of the self.
 
I think we need to be rewriting all the rules of all writing, including memoir and essays. I reject the idea that you can't be a victim. Roxane Gay has written about this in her memoir, Hunger: “It took a long time, but I prefer 'victim' to 'survivor' now. I don't want to diminish the gravity of what happened. I don't want to pretend I'm on some triumphant, uplifting journey. I don't want to pretend that everything is okay. I'm living with what happened, moving forward without forgetting, moving forward without pretending I am unscarred.”
 
I just had an argument the other day with a writer whom I love. She says, “There are no victims in essay and memoir.” I was like, “Yeah, we're rewriting those rules. I mean, there are victims.” 
 
I was in a writing group with some people and I stopped being in the writing group, because I wrote a story about something that happened to me when I was seven. And someone said, “You sound like a victim.” And then someone else was like, “Yeah, you don't want to sound like a victim.” I said, “I was seven. I was a victim.” Bullies have made all the rules. Bullies don't want to read victimization stories, but other victims do. 
 
When I was at Longreads, I wrote a blog post about how Elizabeth Wurtzel made it okay to write ‘Ouch’. I feel very strongly that when you've been hurt, it's okay to write ‘Ouch’. I hate false bravado.
 
I also like confessions. The reason I chose to call these confessions instead of essays is because some of the pieces in the book don't really rise to the standards of an essay collection. This is a memoir in episodes, in vignettes. I'm confessing to things that I haven't been allowed to say, that I've wanted to say, that aren't all flattering. And so, I call them confessions.
 
KARIN: You have devoted your career to personal narrative, both as a writer and as an editor.
 
SARI:  It's absolutely true. I've been involved in this since 1991.
 
KARIN:  You’ve been witness to the whole trajectory since the memoir boom of the 90s. Where do you think things are headed? 
 
SARI:  Early on, there was Prozac Nation. There was The Liar's Club. There was Angela's Ashes. There was The Kiss, Kathryn Harrison's memoir about her affair with her father. That was the beginning of the 90s memoir boom. 
 
It's been a boom bust, boom bust kind of thing.
 
Where it's headed is more previously marginalized voices are being shared. I've noticed a lot of memoirs that are written in fragments. Maggie Smith has one coming out. She's a poet. Abigail Thomas writes in fragments. It feels like she's always been writing in fragments from her first memoir, Safekeeping.
 
I tend to think unless your memoir is about a very specific turn of events, a straight narrative can be really boring because the connective tissue in between the important points in your life can make it blah.
 
I'm just finishing this memoir, which I absolutely love by Kimberly Harrington, But You Seemed So Happy. It's about the dissolution of her marriage. She alternates personal essays with humor essays, like she would have in McSweeney's or Shouts and Murmurs in the New Yorker. It's all about her marriage, but it's broken up. I've been more drawn toward episodic memoirs.
 
KARIN:  More like a memoir-in-essays?
 
SARI:  Yes. The ‘essay’ term is very broad. I have a larger understanding of what a personal essay is, but there are people who are sticklers.
 
KARIN:  What does it mean to fit the standards of an essay?
 
SARI:  I've worked with colleagues who feel very strongly that a personal essay needs to have a real argument in it.
 
KARIN:  What does that mean exactly?
 
SARI:  You're making a point with the essay, you're not just telling a story. I like to let the reader figure out what the point is. A lot of publications require an essay to have at its center an argument that you then back up with data and sources, even if it's just a very personal story.
 
I wrote an op-ed for The New York Times about when I got hit by a car. I was so stunned that people in New York were so helpful to me. The editors wanted me to bring in another instance in which somebody was hit by a car and not treated the same way as me. Also, to bring in statistics. Now that's an op-ed which is a different kind of essay, but there are editors at a lot of publications that want you to do that. With a personal essay, they want you to use your anecdote to illustrate a point. By my standards, the pieces in my book are personal essays, but again, I have a much broader definition than some editors.
 
KARIN:  What about Modern Love?
 
SARI:  I think they look for the Modern Love piece to really have a point at the center of it, even if it's not spelled out. Whereas some of mine are more like light anecdotes.
 
KARIN:  But I imagine that you, as an editor of essays, would want to know Why are you telling me this?
 
SARI:  That has to be inherent, but it doesn't have to be spelled out.
 
KARIN:  What is the difference between a long-form essay and a shorter form essay? Other than the length?
 
SARI:  My second Modern Love is 1,500 or 1,600 words, but there's a 5,000-word version of it in the book. I first wrote the 5,000-word version long before I had a book deal. I struggled to sell it and then I thought, I’ll try and do a Modern Love version. I did, and I sold it.
 
Some of it has to do with where you want to publish it. A great exercise is to have different versions of your piece that can go in different places and also amplify different aspects of the same story. 
 
It's harder to publish long-form right now. There are fewer and fewer venues. These days, Longreads is primarily a curation site with occasional long-form personal essays; where I used to publish three a week, they're now publishing maybe one a month. And Catapult just folded. It's hard to publish a 5,000-word essay, unless it's in your book. So, it might be worth your while to come up with a 1,200-word version for the Washington Post or the Huffington Post—a shorter version that could maybe even help you get a book deal, and then you put the longer version in the book.
 
KARIN:  What is your advice to writers who have a story they’re feeling reluctant to tell?
 
SARI:  I encourage you to write the version that you can't publish first. There's something valuable in getting it out of your head and out of your body. Something happens when it's a secret in your body, you don't have any perspective on it. And you can't until you get it out of your body and onto the page where you can see it. 
 
Then once it’s out of your body, take a break from it. Give yourself a couple of weeks, then come back to it. Let yourself have the experience of having it out of your body. There's something that happens in that early draft, some kind of neurological thing that permits you to gain perspective, that you can't have when it's just this thing you're not allowed to tell.



Buy the book

To learn more about Sari Botton visit her site.

See all interviews

 

Oldster Magazine explores what it means to travel through time in a human body—of any gender, at every phase of life. It focuses on the good, the bad, and the ugly we experience with each milestone, starting early in life. It’s about the experience of getting older, and what that means at different junctures.


Adventures in Journalism features the highlights and lowlights* (*mostly lowlights) from one Gen X lady writer's rather circuitous career path.

Looking for a quick route toward success as a writer? Allow Sari Botton to demonstrate what not to do, over the course of 30-plus hilarity-(in hindsight)-filled years.


Each week, the editors of certain literary publications select their very favorite new personal essay or memoir piece, and you can find them all collected in the Memoir Monday newsletter—along with details about upcoming readings.

Inside features: First Person Singular features original published essays, and The Lit Lab offers perspectives on craft, publishing, publicity, and more.

 

A Conversation with Zibby Owens

It's back to school season, and my 10-year-old daughter has been reading some of my old favorite Judy Blume titles. Remember Deenie and Are You There God, It's Me Margaret? She has also been enjoying the Owl Crate, which is a monthly book subscription. We've just started reading aloud The School for What Nots by Margaret Peterson Haddix, where all the characters get their own voices!

Equally exciting is the conversation I had with Zibby Owens, a book-loving, creative force. Zibby created the award-winning podcast Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books and is making major strides to transform the publishing landscape with her own publishing company, Zibby Books. She is working hard to create a new paradigm that is more author-centric. I find her inspiring in every way.

If Zibby doesn't already have enough plates spinning, she also just published her book Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss and Literature, which interlaces the books that have shaped her life with the events of her journey as they unfold.

In our interview below, Zibby shares about her mission as well as a lesson she learned at business school, which I believe is one key to her success.

In fact, Zibby will be visiting the Unlocking Your Story workshop this fall as a guest author. The 10-week sessions start next week! There is still space, so let me know asap if you want to jump in.


ZIBBY OWENS is an author, podcaster, publisher, CEO, and mother of four. She is the founder of Zibby Owens Media, a privately-held media company designed to help busy people live their best lives by connecting to books and each other. The three divisions include Zibby Books, a publishing house for fiction and memoir, Zcast, a podcast network powered by Acast including Zibby’s award-winning podcast Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, and Zibby Mag, a new content and community site including Zibby’s Virtual Book Club.

Bookends is Zibby’s intimate life story as told through the books she was reading at the time of pivotal moments, the effects they had on her, and what they taught her through each word on the page. An honest and moving story about relationships, love, food issues, the writing life, finding one’s true calling, and most of all, books. Bookends will inspire and uplift anyone who flips through its pages.

Zibby is a regular columnist for Good Morning America and a frequent guest on morning news shows recommending books.

 

KARIN GUTMAN: Let’s talk about your book! You spend so much time raising other authors up and I want to raise you up. How did you know it was time to tell your own story in the midst of everything else you're doing?
 

ZIBBY OWENS: Well, I've been trying to write this book for so long. So it's not as if I started this other stuff, and then decided to write a book. It actually was reversed in that I've been trying to write a book and then started some other stuff to help me do that, which ended up taking on a life of its own. Now that this book is coming out, it's like gravy on top of my life versus the main thing that I thought I was trying to achieve. Still very, very rewarding and exciting and it's been a goal that I've had for so long to get the story out, particularly after losing my best friend in 911, Stacey Sanders. I just kept writing about that, out of disbelief really. I'm sure many have gone through grief and an event that they just can't seem to process and metabolize because it's just so awful. 
 
I tried to get the story out right after business school in 2003/4. I put it aside. I stayed home with my kids for 11 years, but it kept nagging at me. It wasn't just her loss, but I had four other losses of people close to me in that year. And since then I've also lost several other people. My dad at one point was like, “Oh jeez, I can't get through this book, so much death.” 
 
But it's not all about that. That's just one tiny sliver of the story. It's also reinvention and finding my voice again and mothering and eating issues and everything that has led me here—and here is such a place of possibility and excitement, and yes reinvention, but also this very mission-driven life that I'm living now where I bolt out of bed (well not today, I overslept) but most days I bolt out of bed and immediately get to it. Whether I'm reading or writing or emailing or posting, if I'm not hanging out with my kids or my husband. 
 
There were many times I thought, Okay, it's just not going to happen for me. I'll just keep interviewing authors every day and put this rejection letter in a file. But it did, and I'm so grateful.
 
KARIN: Since cracking this book has been such a long process, was there something that clicked or opened up for you at a certain point?
 

ZIBBY: I think it was a confluence of several factors. When I first tried to sell the story, even though I started as a memoir, I rewrote it as fiction. That was problematic in that it was removed from what I had experienced, but I wasn't comfortable with sharing all that. It was also my first novel, and I firmly believe you have to write at least two novels to have a good third one come out.
 
But ultimately, it all came together when I decided to weave in books, which is my true love anyway. That was really what unlocked the power. Also, the timing was such that when I pitched it again as this book-laced thing, my own platform had grown enough so I wasn't completely unknown. Even still, I had one offer, and I took it. 
 
It's still hard for me to explain the book. I’m like, It’s my life!
 
KARIN: It is your life. I really enjoyed getting to know you and your journey.
 
ZIBBY: Thank you. Yeah, a lot of people are writing saying, “I listened to you falling asleep” or “I feel like I just had coffee with a girlfriend reading it.” It's not this big literary masterpiece. I'm just writing my voice on the page, like I would tell you right now. Obviously, it's more complicated than that, but I just write what I feel. I am not somebody who needs all the literary trappings of a sentence. I can do that but it's not as authentic as what I'm trying to do, for me.
 
KARIN:  You wrote that one of the lessons you learned in business school is “it’s good enough.” What does that mean to you in relationship to writing or anything else that you're doing?
 
ZIBBY:  I think about that a lot actually, so I'm glad you asked about it. In regards to Bookends, I was reading it again the other day, and I was like, Oh gosh, I would change so much. In fact, I kept rewriting the ending as time was going by between edit rounds. So, the ending was not what it was originally, because it hadn't happened yet in real life. It's just interesting that I was catching up right as I wrote it, and then I had the deadline. I need those external things. I'm an ‘obliger’ in Gretchen Rubin’s four tendencies. If that is the cutoff, that is the cutoff.  
 
It is much harder to regulate myself. I've really had to reprioritize a lot of things. I used to be the first person to turn in the medical forms. I used to set my alarm for five in the morning when the afterschool signup was up and I was enrolling. Now (I shouldn't even admit this) I missed the parent-teacher conference. So I had to reach out to the school and say, I missed it, could you help me out here? Of course, they did. I'm not saying that being a bad parent is what I'm recommending, but I’m letting some of the management things of life slip a little. I'm getting in the forms, but I have to be reminded a couple of times. I feel badly about that. But I have eight million emails and so I'm not doing some things as well. My kids’ birthday parties... I'm happy to call a place and have them run the show. The day before I’m still buying balloons and making it all special, but I'm not calligraphy-ing tote bags. I've had to make a lot of choices.
 
KARIN:  As a mom who runs her own business, I appreciate that!
 
The other thing that strikes me is that you give yourself permissionto write your story, to follow your instincts and pursue things you’re curious about. Where does that come from?
 
ZIBBY:  When I hear you say that, it makes me think of giving myself permission to share and be open. I don't know why I feel so comfortable. I was literally sitting next to the husband of a friend of mine at dinner the other night, and he was looking at me like I was nuts. He was like, I can't believe you share all this stuff. And I'm like, Yeah, I just do it. It comes really easily for me to write about my feelings. 
 
I started writing as soon as I could write. My grandparents published this mini book for me when I was nine, with two short stories I had written and I had my name on the spine and from then on, I was like, This is what I want to do. I want to be an author. But there's no great path to that. 
 
I kept writing, and one day I had gained some weight after my parents got divorced. I was noticing these very subtle shifts in the way people were treating me and I was upset about it. So I sat down at my desk one afternoon and wrote it all out. The way I write to myself is essay’ish. I don't know why, that's just how it comes out. And I printed it. My mother intercepted the printout and walked into my room flipping through it saying, “You have to get this published. This is going to help so many other girls.” She said I should send it to one of my favorite magazines, and helped me find the address to Seventeen. We sent it in together and they bought it. I feel like my life might have gone in a different direction had they not bought that piece and actually I'm still in touch with my editor Marie Evans, who became my editor at Real Simple.
 
KARIN:  That's amazing. 
 
ZIBBY:  Yeah, we have stayed in touch this whole time. She was really young. I was really young. And now we are not. But it was this picture of me holding a scale in disgust with the caption “Do 10 extra pounds make me a less worthy person?” I talked about the pain I felt in having gained weight.
 
But it wasn't just the writing of it, it was the fact that the magazine got so many letters and told me that I had helped so many people. That made me feel so good. So whenever I'm sharing, it's not to make myself into some public thing. That was never the intention of any of it. The goal of sharing is: a) it does emotionally help me, but b) I know that if I'm experiencing something, somebody else is experiencing it. You don't believe that necessarily until you have it proven time and time again. So even now, I'm thinking I should write about how I feel shame or I'm embarrassed or whatever. Other people are going through midlife and they're having some of these feelings and I should write about it, because as soon as I write about it, I get all this positive feedback. People saying, Oh my gosh, I had never thought about it. I hadn't articulated that. Thank you. And then I'm like, Oh phew, thank you. I'm not alone. So it's this very positive loop. So yeah, I give myself permission for that.
 
KARIN: I am curious about you as a mom. How do you do it all?
 
ZIBBY: The main thing is, I'm divorced and remarried and so every other weekend I have these long weekends without the kids. I could not do this if I had the kids full-time. No possible way. I catch up, I read, I write, I sleep. I have these days and I'm sad. I really, really miss them. I cry and it's still hard for me. It has been years and years. But from a professional standpoint it makes all the difference. 
 
Also, I have a wonderful nanny, but I'm home and I also do everything at home. So they're always in and out. In the afternoons I try not to schedule anything. I organize my work day around their pickups and drop offs, because those are really important to me. I tried for a while not to schedule anything after they got home, but now it's impossible. So maybe I'll have an event or maybe one call if I really need to. Also they're growing up. I have two 15-year-olds who don't need me all the time. And my nine-year-old and seven-year-old are like BFFs. They always know what I'm doing. I'll explain, “Remember this book I've been reading the last three days? I'm about to interview this author.” So they get it. I involve them in everything, so they're excited for me when good things happen. 
 
Sometimes I think I'm doing a better job with the younger kids because I'm not hovering as much as I did with my older kids. With my older kids, I was on the floor. I was home for 11 straight years, and I was in it every minute. That was my focus. With the little kids, we all have our focuses and we do it together, and I think that's a little bit more balanced.
 
KARIN:  I love that, it makes a lot of sense.
 
With the launch of your publishing company, Zibby Books, I'm wondering what your take is on publishing right now. How do you see what you're doing as similar or different than a traditional publisher? You’re forging new territory, which is very cool and exciting.
 
ZIBBY:  A lot of it comes from, Well, what if we did it this way? Like, why does it have to be that way? 
 
I wanted to build a company from the ground up, because so many of the authors I had interviewed had issues with the way the world is at traditional publishing houses. This is no fault of anybody who works at a traditional publishing house. It's just the way they were built. I wanted to make things more author-centric. 
 
I know what it’s like because I struggled for so long to get this book out. I’ve had experience at multiple publishing houses with my two anthologies and my children's book and then Bookends. I got to see how publishers handled authors—how things worked, what makes sense, what didn't. I thought, Well, maybe I can be the one to make some changes here. It took me a long time. I had one call with a distributor to discuss and thought, I am so not ready. I have actually partnered with Leigh Newman who had experience and showed me the way, and our consulting publisher Anne Messite was a huge help. We just had our huge sales presentation to the same distributor. At the end of this big presentation in this packed room with so many people on Zoom—me wearing a business suit—and I’m like, "I can't believe I'm standing here doing this presentation with our six spring titles and our covers. It was only two years ago that I had my first call with you when I had no idea what I was doing." And they said, “Well, it looks like you got your act together, because now it's out there.”
 
Every day I have new ideas. Everything I go through as an author informs what I'm going to do for my authors. So I just got back from book tour and thought, This makes no sense. I'm going to rethink book tours. How can I do things differently? So I'm just using all my experience to try to improve the experience of others and do things the way I want.
 
KARIN:  Can you share more specifics about what you're doing?
 
ZIBBY:  Some of the things:

  • We are only doing 12 books a year because any more than that, I think we're competing with ourselves. 
     

  • We are doing a year of reading. So if you were only to read our books in a year, it would be what you would need, in order. I don't like reading four really gut-wrenching memoirs in a row. I like to read a memoir, and then I like to read fiction, and then maybe this. It's like a book club. You could just read the books in the book club. I have Zibby’s Virtual Book Club and people read the books that I recommend, and they're like, “I wouldn't have read that, but you recommended it and I loved it.”
     

  • There is no lead title. We're not pushing one book the way other publishers pick one book a month. Those poor other authors. Why? Everybody's in there writing and everybody should be heralded for their accomplishments. 
     

  • We have profit sharing among the author's because I really want them all united, which they are. They're all on WhatsApp and talking all the time. That's taken off without me. We're having face-to-face regularly—all the authors, all the agents, all the people at the company.
     

  • We have an Indie Bookseller Advisory Board and an Author Advisory Board. We have 750 readers who are Zibby Books ambassadors in 47 states around the country who are working with their indies. We’re even piloting a new program with bookshop.org to help local bookstores. We’re helping bookstores by doing programs like 22 in 22, where we encourage book readers to go to 22 bookstores in person in 2022.
     

  • We have a couple of initiatives in the works for next year. We are partnering with brands. We're trying new distribution techniques. And we're creating community around books.

So that's our overarching mission.

KARIN:  That's a lot! 

Is this the direction publishing is moving or can all of this coexist? Between what you’re doing, the hybrids, and traditional publishing.

ZIBBY:  I don’t know. We’re going to wait and see how it all shakes out.

I am actively talking to lots of other players in the business towards accomplishing my mission. All of the things I'm doing are to reach a goal of helping discoverability for authors, helping readers find the right books, and connecting book lovers to each other. Other people are tackling that in different ways. And I'm all about, Let's get on the phone and how can we work together to do this? Because if there are more smart people tackling this problem in different ways, I want to use all of our brains to tackle it.

KARIN:  How would you define the problem?

ZIBBY:  The problem is, so many authors write books that don't get picked up, discovered, don't do well, because people aren't hearing about them. They aren't finding them. So they don't even have the opportunity to love them. I really think it's just so hard. Bookstores are like finding a needle in a haystack. It's just really hard to find a new book in that way. And yet, all the channels are crowded with noise and there are so many options for our time. So how do we get a book to stand out? How can we help authors feel valued? How do we frame success for an author? How do we have the books reach the right people and not make people feel like they're a cog in the wheel?

If we could figure it out, I'd be like, Okay great, I'm gonna go back to the beach. I just want to solve this problem.




Buy the book

To learn more about Zibby Owens visit her site.

To learn more about her publishing company, visit Zibby Books.

See all interviews

A Conversation with Miriam Jacobson

Tomorrow marks the 20th anniversary of the attacks that took place on September 11, 2001. I had the privilege of working closely with writer Miriam Jacobson on a personal essay in which she shares her experience of that fateful day and its aftermath. Miriam's father worked on the 110th floor of the World Trade Center and was killed in the attack. You can read the piece here, published by the Huffington Post.

I asked Miriam about her experience writing the essay, something she says has been percolating for a long time, and what it means to see her words finally in print. Scroll down to read our interview.

It's rewarding for me, too! I become deeply invested in the stories shared in the intimate spaces of the workshops and private sessions, and to witness them fly into the world and into the hearts and minds of those who read them, is thrilling. I feel so grateful to be a part of this process!


Miriam Jacobson is a holistic dietitian and the founder of Every Body Bliss, a functional nutrition practice located in Los Angeles. She supports individuals on their healing journey using a combination of nutritional therapy, mindset coaching, and breathwork. It is her mission to create a supportive environment for healing while helping individuals feel empowered, engaged, and joyful about their health. You can follow Miriam on instagram @everybodybliss.

Her personal essay commemorating the 20th anniversary of 9/11 is featured in the Huffington Post.

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KARIN GUTMAN: The anniversary of 9/11 must be an emotional time for you each year. How is this year, the 20th anniversary, special or different?

MIRIAM JACOBSON: The anniversary is always so loaded, but I think this year it’s even more complex. I think about 9/11 on most days—my family and I still face its devastating impact on a daily basis. But writing this essay feels like it helped me reclaim some of my power. While some of my worst nightmares came true, I have also been able to help others along my journey and that feels really good. So, it’s complicated. But I’m also just really excited and proud (and honestly a little nervous!) to see my writing out in the world!

KARIN: What inspired you to write a personal essay to commemorate this event?

MIRIAM: For the past few years I wanted to write a personal essay like this, but I didn’t know what to share. I have spent so much time hiding my connection to 9/11 and I was scared of the visibility—was this something I really wanted to call attention to? But I couldn’t escape my nagging thoughts telling me to write my story. While setting goals for the writing workshop this past winter, I thought it could be interesting to write a personal essay for the 20th anniversary. I thought it would be a meaningful way to reflect on my growth over the last 20 years. The other students in the workshop were so supportive and encouraging, which boosted my confidence in later submitting it for publication.

KARIN: Can you share about your writing process? What did you learn from it, personally or as a writer?

I learned how much time and effort goes into writing a cohesive piece. I knew the essence of what I wanted to convey, but had no idea what to say or how to say it. I just started putting words down on paper and presented the essay several times to the writing group, changing the structure as I received feedback from them. Twelve drafts later (with your help) I finally had a final essay to submit. I also didn’t fully realize how challenging it is to write a short piece, because I needed to be picky with every single sentence.

Personally, I’ve been learning to be easier on myself. In the past I have been a perfectionist, pushing down my feelings and grinding through my discomfort to get stuff done. But I know this is counterproductive, and I am trying to rewrite old patterns and be kinder with myself. I took a lot of time writing the piece because it was an emotional process. I gave myself a lot of space and grace when I wasn’t up for it, or knew when I needed to lie down to do breathwork, or talk to a friend to integrate what was surfacing.

KARIN: What do you hope that people remember on this day, the 20th anniversary of September 11th?

There is so much hate and division in today’s world. I want to remind people how much more we can accomplish when we are able to come together and channel more love for one another. After the attacks in 2001, strangers in the NYC community were so kind and supportive, which brought me a tremendous amount of comfort back then. Although we all come from different backgrounds, I hope we can remember how much more powerful we are when we can embrace each other’s differences and act through love rather than xenophobia and hate.

KARIN: For you, who have experienced so much loss, can you share how writing might be helping you to heal or transform that loss?

I wasn’t ready to write about any of this for a long time. Now that I’m finally ready, I find writing helps me process my experiences. Living through these traumas and losses felt like an out-of-body experience. Writing is the opposite—an in-body experience that helps me process the events almost like they’re happening in real-time. Sometimes I find myself in front of my laptop with tears streaming down my face as I write. This feedback points to what parts of my story still need love, attention and healing. I also think it’s incredible that I get to assign meaning to what I lived through, which has helped me reclaim parts of my past when I felt like I was out of control or victimized. I think that’s so powerful!

The most surprising thing about writing and healing has been reconnecting with my family. Writing about my parents feels like I’m bringing them back to life, which is a strange and also sweet experience.



Read Miriam's essay.

To learn more about Miriam Jacobson visit
Every Body Bliss.

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Miriam and her father, Steven Jacobson.

Miriam and her father, Steven Jacobson.

Steven Jacobson, chief broadcast engineer for WPIX, perched on the transmitter's 360-foot antenna at the top of the World Trade Center, circa 1981.

Steven Jacobson, chief broadcast engineer for WPIX, perched on the transmitter's 360-foot antenna at the top of the World Trade Center, circa 1981.

Steven Jacobson, on the roof of One World Trade Center.

Steven Jacobson, on the roof of One World Trade Center.

Photos courtesy of Miriam Jacobson.