Join Brown Bag Lit co-founders Chloe Yelena Miller & Shasta Grant, along with special guests Diane Gottlieb and Pooja Makhijani for this fake AWP panel discussion!

FAMILY ALBUMS: WRITING ABOUT LOVED ONES. As writers, we're often told to write what we know. And what most of know is our family. But writing about our loved ones can be tricky. What is more important: fact or emotional truth? What is okay to reveal and what is off limits? What about your poor mother?

There are many decisions to be made when writing about family (especially children), memories, traditions, and culture. How can we balance the considerations and privacy of the actual people while also fully developing characters on the page? Hear how four writers have made decisions about how to frame and put boundaries on their narratives.

This event is free but registration is required. Please visit Eventbrite for a ticket.

PANEL PARTICIPANTS:

CHLOE YELENA MILLER lives in Washington, D.C., with her family. She is the author of Viable (Lily Poetry Review Books, 2021) and Unrest (Finishing Line Press, 2013). Chloe teaches writing at American University and University of Maryland Global Campus, as well as privately. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and a BA from Smith College. She has received residencies from Bread Loaf, A Room of Her Own and Vermont Studio Center. In 2022 and 2020, she was granted a DC Arts and Humanities grant for her writing.

SHASTA GRANT is a writer and editor based in Indianapolis. She is the author of Gather Us Up and Bring Us Home (Split Lip Press, 2017). Her stories and essays have appeared in cream city review, Epiphany, Heavy Feather Review, wigleaf, and elsewhere. She won the 2015 Kenyon Review Short Fiction Contest, selected by Ann Patchett. She was selected as a 2020 Aspen Words Emerging Writer Fellow and the 2016 SmokeLong Quarterly Kathy Fish Fellow. She has received residencies from Hedgebrook and The Kerouac House. She holds an MFA in Writing from Sarah Lawrence College and is the Coordinating Editor at SmokeLong Quarterly.

POOJA MAKHIJANI is the editor of Under Her Skin: How Girls Experience Race in America (Seal Press), an anthology of essays, and the author of Mama’s Saris (Little Brown Books for Young Readers), a picture book. Her bylines have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, Real Simple, The Atlantic, WSJ.com, The Cut, Teen Vogue, Epicurious, Publishers Weekly, ELLE, Bon Appétit, The Kitchn, BuzzFeed, and Catapult among others. Her essay, "The Path to an American Dream, Paved in Vienna Fingers," was named Notable in The Best American Food Writing 2019.

DIANE GOTTLIEB'S writing appears or is forthcoming in River Teeth, HuffPost, SmokeLong Quarterly, Barrelhouse, The Rumpus, Hippocampus Magazine, and 100-Word Story, among other literary journals and anthologies. She is the winner of Tiferet’s 2021 Writing Contest in nonfiction and a 2023 nominee for Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and Best Short Fiction. Diane has her MSW, MEd, and an MFA in Creative Writing. She is the editor of Awakenings: Stories of Body and Consciousness (Oct 2023) and is the Prose/CNF Editor of Emerge Literary Journal. You can find her at https://dianegottlieb.com and on Twitter @DianeGotAuthor.