Valerie Looper, author of “My Only Religious Experience,” Winner in the 2021 San Diego Memoir Showcase. Interview with Laura Engel, SDMWA Board President
LE: Congratulations on being a winner in the Showcase Valerie! In a nutshell – tell us about your winning memoir piece for the 7th Annual San Diego Memoir Showcase.
VL: Some people have wonderful, compelling religious experiences, and then there are people like me. It took a long time, and help from somebody else, for me to see that it was a genuine religious experience.
LE: What has been your experience taking classes/workshops and writing memoir in San Diego?
VL: I’ve been in the Friday Writer’s Read and Critique group for about two years, and the biggest kick of all is watching a good, interesting, well-written story turn into something even more compelling, and still true.
LE: This year has been unsettling in so many ways. Valerie, could you tell us how that has affected your writing?
VL: I got into Marni Freedman’s Friday Group in part because I wanted to get away from technical writing, which is my job as a patent attorney. This year I found myself doing far more technical writing on a daily basis than ever before. Most of it has to do with separating speculation, wild guesses, and prejudices from evidence. This year has been a vivid illustration of one of my favorite judge’s sayings, “Reasonable minds might differ.” Too many people seem wedded to one, single approach, when we have many different tools, and we should be using every last one of them.
LE: What are you excited about when it comes to participating in the 7th Annual San Diego Memoir Showcase??
VL: I never expected to write something that would be performed. I had always thought of my writing as something to be read quietly. I was able to sit in on the first table reads for all of the selections for Memoir Showcase, and the addition of the actors’ voices really made them all come alive. I am looking forward to seeing them performed onstage, with room for the actors to move and gesture. There is also the setting. So far, I have only seen pictures of the Baker Baum Theater at the Conrad Prebys Performing Arts Center. The building and grounds are lovely. It should be a wonderful evening.
LE: Again, congratulations Valerie, we are so excited to see your story performed on stage at the Conrad in La Jolla on Dec. 7th!