Today, Amistad published My Remarkable Journey by Katherine Johnson, detailing her childhood, education and career as a NASA mathematician. Johnson is one of the Black women whose work was profiled in the book and film Hidden Figures.
Shuly Cawood
Years ago, when I was in Earth Fare shopping, my husband and I met someone with whom he had grown up. We got to talking and discovered we were each writing memoirs. The difference? She had a publisher. And a contract. And a deadline. I was still, at that time, just writing my memoir hoping someone, someday, would want it. Which I admitted to her (all the while wishing I could say to her: âYou have a publisher? Oh, me too, me too.â)
As the story goes, she said to me, âAll you have to do is get published in The New York Times.â Which is what she had done. As if that were the easiest thing in the world. On her first try, she had gotten a piece into The NYT Modern Love column and boom bim bam, she had a publisher for a memoir she had not even written.
Brian Broome: On Letting Other Genres Inspire You
In this article, author Brian Broome explains how a Gwendolyn Brooks poem inspired him to write his memoir Punch Me Up to the Gods.
Author:
May 22, 2021
Brian Broome is an award-winning writer, poet, and screenwriter, and K. Leroy Irvis Fellow and instructor in the writing program at the University of Pittsburgh, where he is pursuing an MFA. He has been a finalist in The Moth storytelling competition and won the grand prize in Carnegie Mellon University’s Martin Luther King Writing Awards. He lives in Pittsburgh.
Brian Broome
Photo credit Andy Johanson
Alexander Lobrano's Paris Memoir, "My Place At The Table" forbes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from forbes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.