Listen:
I’m so delighted to share Jeannine Ouellette and her massive talent in this episode of Freelance Writing Direct. I am a huge believer in literary citizenship and Jeannine truly embodies that concept in her work with her community, Writing in the Dark (which also offers courses and is a Substack, too).
She goes to a dark place in her book The Part That Burns, which covers childhood abuse and it’s effects on her, but she covers it so deftly using metaphor and making such magic with words that the reader is not put off, but stays with her for the journey. Because she is just so good at painting a picture with her words.
In This Episode:
- Finding her way into literary writing later in life
- Creating art that blurs boundaries
- Making magic with metaphor and the language of nature
- Dealing with difficult childhood experiences through writing
- Traversing the intersection of fiction and memoir
- The risk of writing from the perspective of a child narrator
- Writing about motherhood and being in one’s body
- Using writing rules and constraints to build a world on the page
- The workshop that broke Jeannine wide open
- Jeannine’s story of the growth of her substack and advice for building a profitable digital newsletter
Watch on YouTube
About Jeannine
Jeannine Ouellette’s lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women’s Literature. She is also the author of the picture book, Mama Moon. Her literary essays and short fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, Masters Review, Calyx, and many others. She holds an MFA in fiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a Millay Colony for the Arts fellow and past juror. Her bestselling Substack, Writing in the Dark, is a passionate creative community for people who “do language,” where writing is part of a deeper, vaster conversation about how attention, curiosity, playfulness, and surprise provide a portal to the profound on the path to becoming, because talking about “how to write better” without that larger context is kind of boring. Ouellette teaches writing at the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and the University of Minnesota, where she also facilitates narrative health writing workshops for healthcare professionals and the public. She is working on a novel.
Connect with Jeannine
Get The Part That Burns on Estelle’s Bookshop
Connect with Estelle
Watch Estelle’s episode #81 with Maggie Smith (mentioned in this episode). The Art of Shaping a Compelling Story
On the Horizon
On September 16th I will be in conversation with Liz Elting (author of Dream Big and Win) at an NYU event (where I teach), followed by a reception. Liz is a noted author and philanthropist. The event is free. Here is a link to register.
We will discuss:
I can’t wait to see some of you from the New York and surrounding areas.
On October 2nd I am excited to do a Craft Talk on Tantalizing Titles. I can’t wait to share what I know about how to create titles from my background as a magazine editor-in-chief who had to write the cover lines that sold millions of magazines on the newsstand.
That later translated into choosing and writing the titles for the articles and personal essays in the publications I worked for. I’ve since built a spidey sense about what works on the page. Please join me and sign up here. You can even bring a title for me to tweak.
