Listen:
This week’s episode features Alysia Abbott, author of Fairyland, whose memoir about growing up with her gay father is as tender as it is devastating. I loved meeting Alysia at AWP back in 2023.
Alysia shares how her father built a queer literary community long before the internet, and how his journals, letters, poems, and comics helped her reconstruct their world on the page. Together, we xplore the craft, history, and emotional truth that shaped both the memoir and how it found new life in a film decades after publication.
I’m still thinking about her father’s voice in her story—and how she found her own.
In This Episode
- Writing memoir from a daughter’s perspective inside a queer community shaped by AIDS and activism
- Using journals, letters, interviews, and research to rebuild a vivid sense of time, place, and character
- Capturing the cultural touchstones, from poetry readings to Pride to the queer arts scene, that defined a transformative era
- Exploring how memoir can serve a higher purpose by honoring a life, a community, and a legacy that might otherwise be lost
- Showing how Fairyland bridges counterculture and mainstream culture, bringing a once marginalized father-daughter story into national conversation
- Navigating the leap from book to film while remaining a trusted collaborator rather than an obstacle
- Crafting an ending that situates one family’s story inside a larger shared queer history
Watch on YouTube
About Alysia
Alysia Abbott is the author of Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and a winner of the ALA Stonewall Award and the Madame Figaro Prix Heroine. The feature film based on her memoir, directed by Andrew Durham and produced by Sofia Coppola, premiered at the Sundance Festival in 2022, played in theaters across the country last month, and is now streaming on major platforms. Her essays and reviews have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Vogue and elsewhere. She has been awarded grants and fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Ragdale and the Virginia Center for the Arts. She currently teaches literature and memoir at Emerson College and MIT.
Connect with Alysia
Get More from Estelle
NYU (Zoom), 6-week course: Writing About Your Life Through Memoir, Essays & Articles — Register Here.
Private small-group memoir class: January sold out in 4 days; and March in a week. The next 6-week session starts May 2026. To secure your spot, email me freelancewritingdirect@gmail.
NEW Substack Post: How to Pitch Slate: Advice, Ideas and Examples For Writing Essays and Articles From My NYU Editor-on-Call Event:
If you missed my Editor-on-Call session with Slate’s Rebecca Onion, I put together a recap with everything writers need to know—rates, story types, what they’re commissioning, and the pitch mistakes editors see most often.
For my yearly paid subscribers, I’m also offering a limited number of pitch/essay reviews connected to the post. I love being able to support writers this way.
Spotlight: My Latest Craft Essay for Open Secrets Magazine
I’m also delighted to share that Open Secrets Magazine featured my newest craft essay, “How to Make Concessions When Writing Confessions.”
In it, I explore how personal essayists can strike the right balance between honesty and discernment—what to reveal, what to withhold, and how thoughtful concessions can actually elevate the emotional power of your story. This is a resource for those polishing those end of year essays.
Student Work
Davina Sambath
Working with Davina throughout my workshop was one of the great joys of teaching this year. She wrote essays that were thoughtful, brave, and emotionally resonant, and it was inspiring to see them deepen through revision.
Her work received two major recognitions:
• Trying to Explain Genocide to a Six-Year-Old was named runner-up for the Kenyon Review Short Non-Fiction Contest.
• A Love Letter to My Mac Yeay was selected as a finalist for The Audacity’s Love Letter Contest, chosen by Roxane Gay.
Davina writes with clarity, depth, and tremendous heart.
Learn more about Davina on her website
Leslie Blanchard
Leslie wrote her New York Times Modern Love essay in my workshop, bringing humor, insight, and emotional clarity to a story about caregiving, family, and love. Watching her refine the piece draft by draft was remarkable, and it was a joy to see the final version published in The New York Times.
Read her Modern Love essay: Negotiating The End of Us
Linda Wolff
Linda wrote her Business Insider essay in my workshop, crafting a deeply honest and tender exploration of her mother’s death and the emotional weight of sorting through a lifetime of belongings. The piece moved me, both as a reader and as her teacher, and it made me think more deeply about the objects we keep and the stories they carry.
Read her essay: When my mom died, sorting through her belongings was overwhelming. I’m determined not to burden my children in the same way.
Explore More
- 📘 Writing That Gets Noticed – Buy the book | Audiobook
- 🎤 Watch Estelle’s TEDx Talk: How to Get Noticed in Your Writing and Beyond
- 📰 Subscribe on Substack: https://estelleserasmus.substack.com
Latest posts: “Why Every Memoir Needs the “Echo Effect”, When Writers Are the Ones Blocking the Page: 6 Ways to Move Forward (and An Offer); Stop Counting Your Words. Start Shaping Your Story” and “How to Get Published in Cosmopolitan or Seventeen” - 🎧 More episodes: Freelance Writing Direct Podcast
About Estelle
Estelle Erasmus is an award-winning journalist, author of Writing That Gets Noticed (named a “Best Book for Writers” by Poets & Writers), and host of Freelance Writing Direct—2025 Podcast of the Year (Education), American Writing Awards. A Contributing Editor for Writer’s Digest and adjunct professor at NYU, her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, PBS/Next Avenue, The Independent, and AARP: The Magazine. She’s served as editor-in-chief of five national magazines.
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