Amy E. Wallen is associate director at the New York State Writers Institute and teaches creative writing at the University of California, San Diego Extension. Her first novel, Moon Pies and Movie Stars, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller.Wallen's new book is When We Were Ghouls: A Memoir of Ghost Stories.
From her Q&A with Deborah Kalb:
Q: You begin your memoir with a memory from your childhood in Peru. Why did you choose to start there?Visit Amy Wallen's website.
A: I never expected to write a memoir, had no intention of writing one. In fact, over and over I swore I was a novel writer only. But I started to write a personal essay about the time my family dug up a grave.
When I discovered that my memory of who was graveside with me, that my brother who so vividly stood out in my memory was missing from the reality, a journey to explore ALL my memories of those years living overseas became insistent.
The discovery of what really happened throughout my childhood became the nagging resource for all the scenes in the memoir. After I realized I had a book-length work and not a short essay I tried out all sorts of structures for how to tell the bigger story.
The metaphor of digging up my family’s history was too great to...[read on]
The Page 99 Test: When We Were Ghouls.
--Marshal Zeringue