The Goldilocks Effect on a Writer: Sometimes “Just Write” Is “Just Right”

A blog post by Publishing Intern Cori Garrett-Goodyear

Publishing Intern Cori Garrett-Goodyear’s “Writer’s Path” vision board, created for her studies in the Bay Path University MFA in Creative Nonfiction program, fall 2022

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Recently my MFA program tasked me with creating a writer’s self-contract. The goal: to stay invested in, and accountable to, myself and my writing once the externally imposed expectations and deadlines of the program are no longer in place. As the end of my final semester draws ever nearer, I find myself hurtling towards the realm of self-accountability—terrain where I’ve historically stumbled. The familiar tug of being pulled in too many directions all at once looms large. My roles as a wife and mother working a full-time day job on top of caring for two small children and an elderly father with dementia presents the perfect scenario for setting up the safety net of a writer’s contract.

Though still a work in progress as of this writing, much of this contract will be based on a past exercise of developing what my program calls a “Writer’s Path.” This is a vision board of sorts, with sticky notes and images culled from websites and good old-fashioned magazines. When I created it this past fall, I surprised myself by firmly gluing the pieces down on a large, white posterboard to create a tentative map of writing waystations and destinations. Although I knew I could always buy a new posterboard and reprint the images, the process of making this Writer’s Path still felt like a bigger psychological commitment than I expected to make at the time. I found the result visually pleasing, and the project left me with a feeling of accomplishment, but somehow it still felt more like a playful creative activity than a promise to honor.

I’m hopeful that the writer’s self-contract will provide me with a more formal “performance agreement.” Performance agreements are often used to get the best out of people working for us (or for others to get the best out of us), so why not apply the same method to get the best out of ourselves? The elements are straightforward enough: identify goal(s), write out the steps to achieve the goals, set deadlines, build in milestones along with associated rewards or penalties, and include a clause for revisiting/reworking the terms of the contract itself as you move forward.

“You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

— Jodi Picoult

Of course, the devil is in the details. My Writer’s Path board prompts me to wrangle with lots of lofty wish-list components: logistics for a trip to Ireland for a writing workshop; investing time and emotional energy in finding a new community of writing and reading partners; the heavy work of revisiting my thesis; pursuing publication possibilities; and taking the big leap of faith both to state and to believe “I am a writer.” Without a doubt, though they shift between waystation or destination status depending on the day, all of these are authentic aspirations. But in the interest of keeping things simple, my initial contract will be this: just write—every day. Something. Anything. Long run-on sentences. Short, choppy free-association thoughts. Gibberish. Favorite song lyrics. Retyped inspirational quotes.

With a nod to Goldilocks trying to find the perfect porridge, chair, and bed, I admit I’ve often faltered upon setting the unrealistic expectation that the words on the page should only land when they present themselves as the “just right” words from outset. Rather than try and fail, it sometimes becomes habit simply not to try at all. But in the words of American novelist Jodi Picoult, “You can always edit a bad page. You can’t edit a blank page.”

I take inspiration from Modern Memoirs’ clients who have clearly already contracted with themselves to “just write,” and who have then entrusted the staff here to help them publish the beautiful books they’ve envisioned. The range of projects in the company’s library is truly impressive, and I have enjoyed learning about current projects underway during my internship. I hope that readers of this post will be inspired to join these writers, and me, in continuing on the Writer’s Path, wherever it may lead.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Adam Lutynski

Adam Lutynski published Founding Mothers: Greenwood Methodist Church, Greenwood, South Carolina, 1858 with Modern Memoirs at the end of 2022. In Lutynski’s words, the book was an “unvarnished draft, a work interrupted,” written by his late wife, Joyce Bowden, who passed away unexpectedly in June 2022. Bowden had published a previous book, her maternal grandfather’s genealogy entitled Four Connor Generations in South Carolina, 1790–1920, with Modern Memoirs in 2014. We asked Lutynski to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share Bowden’s books with others.

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Joyce Bowden

1. As the title states, your wife’s recent book is about the eight women founders of the Greenwood Methodist Church in Greenwood, South Carolina in 1858. In it she wrote, “This book presents a different picture of a Methodist church than the customary one in which male itinerant and local preachers built the church. It shows that women had an entirely different view of the mission of the church. To them, the central question was, ‘What does faith mean for parents, husbands and children?’” Besides the fact that some of Joyce’s ancestors were members of the Greenwood church, what do you think it was about this project that resonated so strongly with Joyce that she was motivated to research each founder’s life so extensively?

Adam Lutynski: As many of us do, Joyce kept her own counsel on many issues. She staunchly supported women’s causes, but rarely wore a supporter badge. During 2020, the 100th anniversary year of women’s suffrage, Joyce read many of the histories of the movement and internalized the intellectual and physical grit demonstrated by the movement’s leaders. She believed she would discover similar qualities among the eight Founding Mothers as they challenged the Methodist hierarchy in establishing Greenwood Methodist Church.

2. In your foreword you acknowledge that Joyce faced some challenges in her research. What can you share about those obstacles and how she grappled with them?

Adam Lutynski: Joyce made numerous requests to the Methodist Church for documentary materials related to the interactions of the Founding Mothers and the church hierarchy about the establishment of Greenwood Methodist Church. She received no response. Joyce interpreted that as dismissive, unworthy of consideration. After Joyce’s death, a surrogate of some stature volunteered to request the materials. Her request also was ignored. Without those materials there is no factual story of the church’s founding. Joyce found no diaries, no ongoing reports in contemporaneous journalism. Joyce could not even find one single image of any one of the Founding Mothers. The records, if any, are in private hands and there is no mechanism for obtaining them. A private individual or institution need not respond or justify the lack of response. The only possible defense I can offer for the church’s conduct is the profound distraction caused by internal turmoil over the issues of same-sex marriage and the status of members of the LGBTQ community within the church.

3. In your foreword, you also say that Joyce’s wish would be either for other researchers to pick up the project and make new factual discoveries, or “to see an imaginative writer, having the highest regard for the indisputable historical facts, tell the enriched story” of how the eight women achieved their goal. Joyce was such a meticulous genealogist—conducting exhaustive research, analyzing evidence, citing all sources—what makes you feel she would like to have the story of the founders told by, say, a historical novelist? Did she ever share this vision with you? Was she a reader of historical fiction?

Adam Lutynski: Joyce and I never discussed her extensive research as a foundation for a work of historical fiction. I would not and could not presume to unilaterally invite authors to move in that direction. I contacted a small group of Joyce’s women friends (including both of Joyce’s research assistants) to ask how they thought Joyce would react to the Founding Mothers story ending as a work of historical fiction. To a woman, they concurred that Joyce would welcome a work of historical fiction because she believed so strongly in having the Founding Mothers’ story told.

4. How did Joyce’s experience publishing her first book with Modern Memoirs influence your decision to publish with us again for the second?

Adam Lutynski: As was often the case, Joyce was many steps ahead of me. She already had a retainer in place with Modern Memoirs for her work on this book. I learned of that only when I notified Megan and Ali of Joyce’s death, and they encouraged me to publish Joyce’s unfinished manuscript as a means of preserving her research and allowing me to share it with others. I’m simply following in Joyce’s footsteps while learning in my many contacts with Megan and Ali what a talented, creative, and insightful team they have assembled.

5. Who are the readers you hope to reach, and how do you plan to distribute the book?

Adam Lutynski: If I may put a slight spin on your question, I hope to interest writers, not readers. The book is not yet ready for readers. It is a draft. It has many rough edges. It needs editing and re-work. My fondest hope is that Joyce’s enthusiasm for this story will spread to one or more creative writers who will then present an enriched story to the audience it deserves. Many copies of the book will go to the archive that accepts Joyce’s research materials. I will also be sending individual copies to graduate schools with creative writing programs and to graduate schools of theology and religious studies. I will also distribute copies to established authors of historical fiction with a request to refer it to a fledgling writer who might work with it.

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RED: A V-Day Writing Exercise

On my way to work on Valentine’s Day I tried to notice everything red. It became a solo game of “I Spy.” I made a list and then thought about each red thing and how it relates to me. Yes, it is possible to see one’s self in everything, even those inanimate relatives. Here is a 15-minute stream of consciousness, roughly the time it takes me to drive to work. I hope readers will be inspired to share their own red reflections in the comments.

The red things I saw: cactus, barn, mailbox flag, bird, sunrise, hat, cord.

Red cactus—Keep away. I need my space. Just let me be. Walk on by. Take a hike. Get lost. Walk the plank…. Notice how, only after you step back and glance sidelong, I reach out to you in my own spiny way.

Red barn, with windows gutted—I am old. I am hollow. Although they abandoned me long ago, I still stand. I didn’t give up when others did. I am quiet and await the sound of the swallows returning to my creaking eaves. I know they will come. Springtime. Patience is a red barn.

Red metal flag on a mailbox—How I love when my flag is up! I hold a letter, an outgoing letter, a love letter to someone special, or a sweet correspondence to an old friend. A heartfelt letter in a uniquely slanted handwriting. How I love my task, to make sure this letter gets from here to there, no matter how far. I can feel the weight of the thoughts on the page. The love and the pain. From me to you and back to me. Connected.

Red bird—I fly and fly and fly. I try and try and try. I go here and there, doing all my dailies. Eat, peck, work, eat, peck, sleep. How far can I fly? How far would I fly? How I love my nest, its tangled braids of grasses woven bit by bit, over time, with messiness, broken twigs, and songs.

Red sunrise—“Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.” What colors can I bring to today that will allay the fears, worries, pains? Clouds painted pink and gold, a ball of fire that lights the way, day after day. I hold a prism of endless inspiration.

Red hat—Wool hat is warm like a womb or a whim. Protection from winter or boredom. Red woolen hat holds the head together, keeps all the thoughts percolating, safe and sound, or soundless and boundless.

Red cord of necklace from the Camino de Santiago on my dashboard—I remind you of a pilgrimage, the walk, the camino. I am the soul that walks on, even as you sleep or even after you die. I am the center of gravity as, footstep after dogged footstep, you plod. I hold you to the Earth, yet in your walking, connect you to the Ether. A white shell with a red sword, stabbing, carving the dirt with your hopes and dreams. Will you ever walk that walk? Some day you may.

Making “Sense” of the Past

This post is the seventh in a series-in-progress by company president Megan St. Marie about heirlooms and objects related to her family history that she keeps in her office to inform and inspire her work at Modern Memoirs. 

See.

Hear.

Taste.

Touch.

Smell.

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Unless they are somehow compromised, all five senses guide us through the world, working with our minds to help us “make sense” of our experiences. Sights, sounds, tastes, textures, and scents can therefore serve as powerful memory prompts. Memoir writers often seem to know this intuitively, and during the editorial process they will sometimes say things to me like:

• “I want this chapter to really capture the flavor of my childhood.”

• Or “This should give readers a taste of what things were like.”

• Or “I need to add a little texture to the description of my grandmother.”

• Or “Can you help me smooth out this paragraph?”

• Or “This scene needs more color, don’t you think?”

Whether or not they use such sensory language to describe what they feel their work needs, I often encourage writers to engage their senses when they are trying to add detail to their manuscripts so that readers can more fully appreciate the context of their life stories. I might offer prompts like:

• What could you see from your childhood bedroom window?

• What did your uncle’s laugh sound like?

• What is a favorite flavor or spice in your family’s cooking?

• Can you describe how the dress you’re wearing in this photograph felt against your skin?

• What did the perfume your great-grandmother wore smell like?

When I was teaching, a colleague gave me the good advice that I should never give an assignment that I hadn’t completed myself at least once in order to align myself with my students’ experience as learners. In that spirit, I will use the final question posed above to let the sense of smell guide me through memories and connections to family in the rest of this piece.

Close-up of dried lavender in a vase from Megan St. Marie's wedding-day centerpieces, now placed in her Modern Memoirs office

My Modern Memoirs office usually smells like lavender because of an essential oil diffuser I set up across from my desk. I placed it there after putting dried lavender in vases from my wedding-day centerpieces atop two bookcases and lining a small shelf with three sachets. I’ve always loved the clean, floral scent of lavender, and although my French ancestors mainly came from the Normandy and Île-de-France regions of France, rather than Provence with its famous lavender fields, the flower and its perfume make me feel connected to that part of my heritage.

Megan St. Marie's great-grandmother Pamela "Pom" Gertrude Cantin Meyer, circa 1962

One reason for this sense of connection may be that my great-grandmother Pamela “Pom” Gertrude Cantin (whom I called “Memé”) wore Jean Naté perfume, which includes lavender notes. She was une femme fière (a proud woman), with hair perfectly coiffed in keeping with her decades of work as a hairdresser, and always dressed to the nines in her pearls and colorful dresses, blouses, and slacks. Her outward appearance and Jean Naté fragrance now strike me as representative of her fierce independence and drive.

The sixth of fourteen children born to French Canadian immigrants Eugenie Duchesne and Magloire Cantin in 1899, my Memé suffered a childhood illness that left her functionally deaf for the rest of her life. She never learned sign language, but got by in the hearing world by reading lips, using hearing aids, and speaking very loudly. She raised her two daughters Rita (my maternal grandmother) and Dorothy (called Dottie) on her own after her husband abandoned them during the Great Depression. I imagine this was a particularly difficult situation for her as a Franco American Catholic woman, but she rose above it with determination and dignity, eventually opening her own hair salon in the Boston area.

Memé was about to turn 77 when I was born, and she died when I was 20. I feel very fortunate that I had her in my life for so long. My mother was close with her, and their closeness inspired my own efforts to bond with Memé during visits in Vermont and at her apartment in eastern Massachusetts and through cards and letters sent back and forth in the mail. During a lonely time spent travelling with a family as a nanny during the summer before I went to college, I sent Memé a postcard every day, and she responded with great frequency. Homesick and nostalgic, I remember smelling the stationery on which she wrote, trying and failing to pick up the Jean Naté fragrance I knew so well.

Close-up of lavender sachets in Megan St. Marie's office, made by her aunt Rita Lambert Lavallee with fabric upcycled from placemats stitched by Anastasie "Tazzy" Raymond Lambert. Left to right, the designs embroidered on the sachets symbolize: the 4th of July when the Lambert family gathers for an annual family reunion; a lamb for the surname Lambert; and a heart in honor of Rita's late sister Barbara Lambert Chevalier, whose birthday was on Valentine's Day

Megan St. Marie's great-grandmother Anastasie "Tazzy" Raymond Lambert, circa 1905 

I didn’t know my other great-grandmothers, who all died before I was born. And yet, the scent of lavender connects me to one of them, as well. My aunt Rita Lambert Lavallee, who made the sachets now in my office, made this connection for me when she wrote about her decision to fill them with dried lavender. The sachets’ fabric originated as placemats made many decades ago by her paternal grandmother, Anastasie “Tazzy” Raymond Lambert. Aunt Rita told me that she remembered visiting this grandmother’s house as a little girl and really liking a scent in the bathroom there, though she didn’t know what it was. Years later as an adult, she bought something with a lavender scent, and only then did she realize that it was the same fragrance she’d loved when visiting her grandmother’s house.

Lavender in a garden bed at Heather Lambert Bessette's home in Vermont, grown in honor of the late Barbara Lambert Chevalier, who was an aunt to her, Megan St. Marie, and their Lambert cousins

Perhaps this association with their Lambert grandmother was what inspired my Aunt Barbara Lambert Chevalier (Rita’s elder sister) to plant lavender in the beautiful garden beds she placed around the family homestead in Highgate, Vermont. I can’t ask her now because she passed away a few years ago before I realized this familial proclivity for lavender; but, I know that at least one cousin, Heather Lambert Besette, picked up on Aunt Barb’s love of lavender and planted some at her own house in a garden that now stands as something of a memorial to our aunt.

Being surrounded by things—including scents—that ground me in a love of family and remembrance of those who came before me sparks affinity with Modern Memoirs clients, who are often moved by those same feelings when they come to us with their book projects. And although I can’t make the soothing lavender that inspired this piece waft out through the words you are reading, I can offer a closing invitation to engage your senses and inspire creativity:

See.

Hear.

Taste.

Touch.

Smell.

Remember.

Write.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Elizabeth Tan Tsai

Elizabeth Tan Tsai is a repeat client with Modern Memoirs. Her first book, entitled A Grandmother’s Diary, came out in 2021 and took one year from the day Tsai first contacted us to the day the books arrived on her doorstep. Immediately after that, she began her second project, a two-volume memoir entitled The Story of an Asian American Immigrant: An Autobiography, which published at the end of 2022. We asked the author to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her books with others.

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1. Your ancestors emigrated from China to the Philippines, where you were born the last of fourteen children. As a child, what were the challenges and rewards of being part of such a large, multi-cultural family?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: As the youngest of 14 children, I was the baby of the family—privileged to sleep with Mother for 14 years, cared for and protected by my siblings. But I had to obey them and, in case of differences in opinion, defer to theirs. Why? We were brought up with the tenet that the older protect the younger, and the younger respect and obey the older. As for my multi-cultural heritage, I grew up among Filipinos, attended public schools, and spoke our Capiceno dialect, neither understanding or speaking Chinese, nor associating with the Chinese community. The Filipinos accepted me as one of them, and I did not feel excluded from any childhood activities, nor did I feel any racial discrimination against me. I elected Philippine citizenship when I ceased to be a minor (at the age of 21 years) and freely exercised all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto. Thank God, I have never experienced racial discrimination in the U.S. either.

2. You studied law in the Philippines and worked for a firm in Manila before coming to the United States and graduating with an LL.M. from Yale Law School in 1965. You decided to remain in the United States, where you worked as a legal writer/editor at a law publishing company, a member of the California State Bar, a practicing lawyer in San Diego, a member of the Bar of the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, and a special counsel at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. What was one of the most rewarding events of your varied and distinguished legal career? Also, what was your experience as a woman in the legal field and in law school at that time?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: The most rewarding event of my career was graduating with an LL.M. from Yale Law School. It opened doors of opportunity and brought me in fellowship with great lawyers imbued with the spirit of service for God, for country, and for Yale.

In law school at Yale, I took nine courses. In eight of these, I was the only female student and all the professors were white men. None of them called on me to recite even though I often raised my right hand. At that time, students were to observe silence until the professor called their name; whereupon they would rise for the Socratic method of interlocution. My ninth class was taught by Professor Ellen Ash Peters (the law school’s first tenured female professor and later the first female chief justice of the Connecticut Supreme Court). She was born in Berlin in 1930 and, when she was nine years old, fled with her family to the U.S. I will always remember how wonderful I felt when she called on me to recite, saying, “Miss Tan.”

After getting my LL.M., I received two job offers: associate attorney in a mid-size law firm in Utica, New York, which I declined; and junior editor at the Lawyers Co-operative Publishing Company in Rochester, New York, one of 10 hired in the summer of 1965 and the first of my cohort to be promoted to editor. At the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, I was promoted to special counsel, doubling my salary in four years and supervising a diverse staff that included three white male attorneys, one white female attorney, one Black female attorney, and the Black librarian of the Division of Investment Management.

3. Your autobiography entailed translation of oral history and numerous family letters from your native language to English, and transcription of these and other materials, such as diaries, speeches, and emails. How do you feel these primary sources enhance the retrospective narrative portions of your autobiography?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: Since these records are contemporaneous to the experiences and events described in the writers’ own words, they reflect the writers’ personality, excitement, and frustrations, while lending an immediacy to the reader. Thus, they are more vivid and factual than a pure retrospective narrative.

4. As a pastime, you love to dance. How does dancing enrich your life and inform your writing?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: Social dancing lifts me up, makes me feel ethereal and larger than life. It is artistic self-expression and a beautiful way to know people. Greeted by smiling faces—happy to see me and dance with me—I feel one with my dance community, an extension of my sweet family; we care about each other and support one another.

My book describes the venues where I have danced and the joys of dancing there, and I see connections between my writing and dancing lives. When learning complex dances, I concentrate and keep practicing. After two hours of dance classes, I stay for the two to three hours of dance party that follows to practice what I’ve learned. Similarly, when I write, I concentrate and keep writing. Also, just as I watch dance competitions and performances to improve my dancing, I read autobiographies to craft my own, such as the one by Edward Gibbon, who wrote his autobiography when he finished writing The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In fact, I got the idea of beginning each chapter with an epigram from U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s Lazy B: Growing Up on a Cattle Ranch in the American Southwest.

5. What was it about your first Modern Memoirs experience that convinced you to pursue your second project with us as well?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: A Grandmother’s Diary was a way to test the waters. I thoroughly enjoyed working with Modern Memoirs, and I was confident that they would be as superb and as encouraging, if not more so, with the second project. The experience of working on the autobiography was akin to, but more fun and fruitful than, taking a course on memoir writing at a university. I learned a great deal, I had the fervent support of experts, and I exulted in the friendship of noble souls.

6. You said that you undertook the autobiography project at the behest of your two children. What were your goals in creating it? Whom do you intend your readers to be, in addition to your immediate family?

Elizabeth Tan Tsai: I wrote my book to leave—in one compendium—records of my life and family felicity. I meant it for my children and grandchildren, my siblings’ descendants, and organizations interested in preserving this family history. This book is my best piece of writing—useful and beautiful. I am happy with the finished, designed product, and have given copies to my close and extended family, Yale University’s Sterling Memorial Library, the Yale Law School Library, the Law School Alumni Reading Room, the Chinese American Museum in Washington, D.C., and the Library of Congress. I feel that, having discharged my duty to record our family history and ensure its preservation for posterity, I can die without regrets.

Though it is still early, I have already received congratulations on what readers have described as “an amazing undertaking” and “a spectacular product.” One grandniece said she is happy to learn the story of our family, and another said that it stirred her to tears. My daughter, Pearl, is also a graduate of Yale, and I included some of her letters from school in one of my volumes. A fellow resident in my retirement community, who attended Yale for eight years, said he found her letters to be “downright nostalgic,” and said, “I was really taken by Pearl’s experience with Yale’s internationalization, both in the student body and the curriculum.”

My husband has read my autobiography, as well, and said that he learned a lot about my parents, how they raised me, and how I raised our two children to be great parents, capable professionals, and good and useful citizens of a modern society. It’s wonderful to know that after 55 years of marriage, my husband is still learning about me.

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Reflections from Modern Memoirs Client Ellen Kanner and Book Artist Annie Zeybekoglu

Ellen Kanner and Annie Zeybekoglu published their book entitled I, Teresa de Lucena: Reflections on the Trial of a Conversa with Modern Memoirs in 2022. For Modern Memoirs, this unique microhistory project, which features translations and text by Kanner and book design and illustrations by Zeybekoglu, took one year from the day the duo first contacted us to the day the books arrived on their doorsteps. We asked Kanner and Zeybekoglu to reflect on what the publication process was like for them, and what it has meant to share their book with others.

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Ellen Kanner and Annie Zeybekoglu working on their book, I, Teresa de Lucena: Reflections on the Trial of a Conversa

1. Through primary sources, your book tells the story of Teresa de Lucena (1467–1545), who was born in Toledo, Spain and faced the Spanish Inquisition twice. How did you uncover Teresa’s story in the first place, Ellen, and what inspired you to pursue it?

Ellen Kanner: Teresa de Lucena first appeared to me as a footnote in a book I was reading about the Spanish Inquisition. The reference numbers that locate her trial in the Inquisition archives caught my eye, but most of all, I recall thinking, “I bet there’s a story there.” What inspired me to pursue Teresa’s story for the next forty years is harder to describe. My passion for Spain and intellectual curiosity kept me moving forward, but what continues to inspire me is the realization that in ways large and small, understanding Teresa’s life helps me to understand my own. For example, as I watched Teresa’s relationships with family and friends unfold, it gave me cause to reflect on mine. And in order to finish writing the book, I found inspiration in Teresa’s strength and perseverance.

2. How was your research complicated by issues of transcription and translation?

Ellen Kanner: Setting out to research Teresa’s life, I had no idea where the journey would lead. The first step was obvious: a trip to Madrid to obtain a copy of her sixteenth-century trial dossier from the vast National Historical Archives. I’ll never forget the thrill of holding the original parchment pages in my hands—a sensation followed almost immediately by the crushing realization that I could not read the old handwriting. Using a partial transcription published by a scholar in 1902, I taught myself to decipher the handwriting. Then I transcribed the documents in Spanish, translated them into English, and only then, created a timeline and a system to cross-reference the 101 people mentioned in her documents.

3. At your book launch in Lexington, Massachusetts in October, Ellen talked about history as viewed through two lenses: a telescope and a microscope. What do you mean by this concept, and how does it relate to your project?

Ellen Kanner: I, Teresa de Lucena is a work of microhistory, a genre that puts the individual at the center of the narrative and then zooms out to create the larger context of her life and times. My intention was to tell Teresa’s story as accurately as possible based on the information revealed in her trial documents. I wanted to understand the details of her life—Where did she live? How old was she when her father fled? Who were the witnesses against her? And this required examining her life in minute detail—as if under a microscope. By contrast, most history is the story of events seen from afar—as if through a telescope. The far view makes it possible to count things, like the stars in the sky or the number of people condemned for heresy in a given city, but it doesn’t give you a sense of what a real person experienced who was living at the time.

4. The book’s design and illustrations are as integral to the power of the book as its text. What were the goals that you set out to achieve visually, Annie? And how did you collaborate with Ellen to achieve those goals?

“The wall” in Annie’s studio, on which Ellen and Annie storyboarded the book in two-page spreads

Santa Maria la Blanca (formerly Ibn Shushan Synagogue), Toledo, Spain, illustrated by Annie Zeybekoglu

Annie Zeybekoglu: We set out to create a book to honor Teresa that was both beautiful and accessible. Ellen’s writing and my design and illustrations evolved together, in support of our decision to focus on the trial and to have Teresa speak in her own voice. I knew there had to be plenty of “air” to help readers decipher the complex narrative, and that we needed to create a format that would help readers know where they were in the trial. Early on we also decided to put Ellen’s research and reflections in sidebars instead of at the bottom as footnotes. Our design decisions, including where to put the sidebars and the illustrations, were meant to evoke an old manuscript. We storyboarded the book on a large wall in my studio in two-page spreads which helped us to see how the trial and evidence flowed and to determine where to place the illustrations.

Ellen, is there anything you would like to add to Annie’s account?

Ellen Kanner: Annie and I were classmates at Smith College, and when I arrived at her studio in 2018 with my translations and research, I already knew I greatly admired her design sense and book experience from other projects we had worked on together over the years. The true gift of working with Annie on I, Teresa de Lucena was the degree to which the design shaped the text and the text shaped the design. I think it’s fair to say our collaboration shows, and that ultimately we found a way to allow Teresa to speak for herself.

5. Your book is available for sale through a Modern Memoirs printer affiliate in an arrangement we set up for you. What drew you to work with Modern Memoirs, as opposed to a commercial publisher? What target audiences do you hope to reach? And can you share any initial reader feedback?

Ellen Kanner: Since Annie and I see the content and the design for the book as inextricably linked—the yin and yang of the reader’s experience, as it were, we were determined to find a publisher who would allow us to stay true to our vision. With that in mind, two friends from Smith referred us to Modern Memoirs, Inc. We brought a very detailed mock-up of the book to our first meeting with Megan and Ali, and when Megan declared, “This is an archivist’s dream,” we knew we had found the right home for Teresa.

From reader feedback, we know that Teresa’s story has moved some people to tears; others have commented on the book’s cultural and religious content. Many have noted how Teresa’s story resonates today, bringing issues like multiculturalism, racial intolerance, and antisemitism into the twenty-first century.

Annie Zeybekoglu: We’re fascinated that every reader we’ve heard from has had their own personal experience with Teresa’s story. As Ellen says: “We set out to create a book about Teresa de Lucena and it seems we created a mirror.”

Interested in reading more? Readers can purchase Kanner and Zeybekoglu’s book at the link below:

Left to right: Megan St. Marie, Annie Zeybekoglu, Ellen Kanner, and Liz Sonnenberg at the book launch for I, Teresa de Lucena: Reflections on the Trial of a Conversa, hosted by Lexington (Massachusetts) Community Education, October 17, 2022

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