How do memoirists fill in the gaps when there are missing pieces in their research—for example, when the person with needed information died long ago or when gender, culture, language, or other barriers thwart the process? These obstacles require memoirists to get crafty. This might mean using creative nonfiction to write imagined scenes or even require lying, eavesdropping, and/or employing subterfuge to gain access to something off-limits. Susan Kiyo Ito, Margaret Juhae Lee, Grace Loh Prasad, and Leslie Absher will present how they used “unofficial” means to get at the truth, and, in essence, became spies in their own stories. Presented by Litquake. 

Panelists: 

Susan Ito is the author of the memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, published by the Ohio State University Press, and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She co-edited the literary anthology A Ghost At Heart’s Edge: Stories & Poems of Adoption.

Connect: Susan Ito - Website

Grace Loh Prasad is the author of The Translator’s Daughter, a debut memoir about living between languages, navigating loss, and the search for belonging. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Literary Hub, Longreads, Guernica, Brevity, The Offing, Oldster Magazine, KHÔRA and more.

Connect: The Translator's Daughter - Website

Margaret Juhae Lee is the author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History. A former editor at The Nation magazine, she received a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korea Foundation.

Connect: Margaret Juhae Lee - Website

Leslie Absher is a journalist and essayist. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Salon, Ms., and other periodicals. She is the author of Spy Daughter, Queer Girl: In Search of Truth and Acceptance in a Family of Secrets.

Connect: Leslie Absher - Website

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