5th Annual San Diego Memoir Showcase Memoir Showcase Winners: Q & A with Diane Schneider & Susan J. Farese
SJF: In a nutshell – tell us about your winning memoir piece for the 5th Annual San Diego Memoir Showcase.
DS: The topic of “I didn’t see that one coming” for this year’s San Diego Memoir Writers Association Memoir Showcase hit a chord for me. I am in the process of writing a memoir titled “Lives on Brown Cards” that is a coming of age story as a newly minted physician at a large, urban Southern hospital. Although the events occurred 35 years ago, memorable patients under my care remain burned in my memory. They changed my life and provided valuable lessons about individuals’ humanity. The story for the showcase, Killer Bees, describes the unexpected loss of a young patient and her family’s surprising response to her death.
SJF: What has your experience taking classes/workshops and writing memoir in San Diego?
DS: Two years ago my friend Lannette Bloom who had recently finished her touching memoir, “Memories in Dragonflies, Simple Lessons for Mindful Dying”, introduced me to the San Diego Memoir Writers Association. After a couple of meetings, I was hooked and signed up for the year-long Memoir writing course through San Diego Writers, Ink in 2018 under the tutelage of instructors Marni Freedman and Tracy Jones. Although I intended to start on another topic, I began “Lives on Brown Cards”. For the first six months this year, I participated in one of Tracy Jones’ Read and Critique classes.
SJF: If you had a magic wand, what kind of opportunities would be available to memoir writers in San Diego?
DS: I am amazed already on the organization and events through the San Diego Memoir Writers Association. It just keeps growing and offering more and more opportunities. As we writers engage in and support those activities, the growth will continue. I would like to see development of small interest groups, such as a memoir book groups.
SJF: What are you excited about when it comes to participating in the 5th Annual Memoir Showcase?
DS: First, I feel incredibly honored to have “Killer Bees” chosen as one of the 10 pieces that will be read. I am excited to have such a wonderful opportunity to see my writing performed and share it with my family and friends. Not only that our Showcase stories will be published along with 20 others in the 2020 anthology, “Shaking the Tree”.
SJF: What advice would you give to a new writer in San Diego?
DS: I could not have gotten to this point without the community of writers that have supported and mentored me through the memoir class and read and critique groups. First, I recommend finding a group. When I wrote my first book, a consumer health book “The Complete Book of Bone Health”, I did it in isolation. Although you think of writing as a solitary endeavor, the overall process is not.
SJF: Favorite Memoirs?
DS: I tend to gravitate to medically-related memoirs. My all-time favorite is “Five Patients” written by medical thriller author Michael Crichton and published in 1970. His book inspired the medical drama, ER.
SJF: Many thanks, Diane!