Memoirists Make Friends on MySpace

by Rachel Deahl, PW Daily -- Publishers Weekly, 6/13/2006

If you want to get your memoir published, or at least guarantee an editor will look at your manuscript, you can now turn to some authors on MySpace for help. The Memoirists Collective (www.myspace.com/thememoiristscollective), which was recently launched by four newly-published memoirists who met each other on the networking site, began as a forum for writers working within the genre. Now, with its second contest underway—the prize is having your manuscript read by the authors' editors—the Collective has proved a smart way for these authors to meet new readers and talk about their trade.

According to author Danielle Trussoni, in the "lonely moments" that so often crop up during a writer's career, MySpace proved to be a welcome sounding board. Trussoni, whose first book, a memoir called Falling Through the Earth came out in February from Holt, was eager to find other writers to talk to, especially other memoirists, while she was working on (and promoting) her first book. In that spirit she found other published writers on the site—a fairly easy task since the majority have their book jacket images prominently featured on their profile pages—and became particularly friendly with three of them: Josh Kilmer-Purcell (I Am Not Myself These Days, HarperCollins); Maria Dahvana Headley (The Year of Yes, Hyperion); and Hillary Carlip (Queen of the Oddballs, HarperCollins). The four, all first-time memoirists were, like Trussoni, interested in befriending other writers to discuss the particulars of working within this genre; thus the Memoirists Collective was born. The two contests, which have both drawn over 100 submissions each, proved an invaluable way to draw interest in the group.

Though the group plans to use the collective to more aggressively promote their own books in the future, right now the goal is to stay connected to other writers (and readers), and to keep talking about writing memoir. "From my point of view the memoir is sort of like the younger sister of the novel," Trussoni told PW. "It's getting so much attention and I would like to see it grow, so this seemed like an ideal way to do that." The collective is also planning to do a group tour in the near future, when their titles are released in paperback; Trussoni said they're planning to call it Scrawlapalooza.