Memoir is never just a record of what happened. It is also a struggle between the past self and the evolving self—and with what can be made from the remains of memory. In very different ways, Jamie Hood and Alexandra Auder write from the afterlife of experience: Hood through the shattered, fiercely intelligent fragments of Trauma Plot: A Life, which interrogates the stories our culture demands survivors tell and centers trauma’s splicing of narrative; Auder through the wild, funny, disorienting world of Don’t Call Me Home, a memoir of two timelines—one is set in the chaotic childhood orbit of her mother, an Andy Warhol-superstar; another in an reflective adulthood that reckons with time, as all memoirists must. Moderated by award-winning writer/editor and founder of Memoiring, Melisse Gelula.
Date
Jun 20, 4:00pm to 5:00pm
Featuring
Jamie Hood
Jamie Hood is the author of Trauma Plot: A Life (Vintage, 2026), the hybrid pandemic diary How to Be a Good Girl (Vintage, 2025/Grieveland, 2020), and Regards, Marcel, an occasional, Proust-infused newsletter. Her essays and criticism have appeared in Bookforum, The Nation, Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. She’s working on a collection of poetry and a novel. She lives in Brooklyn.
Alexandra Auder
Alexandra Auder is a writer and actor. Her memoir, Don’t Call Me Home (Viking 2023), about growing up in the Chelsea Hotel with a crazy mom, (Warhol superstar Viva), was a finalist for The Thurber Prize for American Humor. She leads an online weekly writing group through Substack.
Melisse Gelula
Melisse Gelula is the founder of Memoiring, a book club and writing community that hosts notable authors each month for live Q+As, and the co-founder of award-winning media company Well+Good (successfully acquired in 2018). Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Vogue, and Good Morning America, as well as Electric Literature and Grand Journal. Melisse has an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is an advisor to the Deep Water Literary Festival. She was recently awarded a NYSCA/Arts For Sullivan Literary Grant for her memoir in progress about being raised by a child psychologist who begins to hear voices. She lives in the Western Catskills and works with writers one-on-one and in groups. You can follow Melisse at memoiring.substack.com and on Instagram @Memoir_ing.
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