Originally from Northern California, where the events of her debut memoir HOLDING mostly take place, Karleigh Frisbie Brogan’s work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and more. She is a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellow and a 2022 Rona Jaffe Scholar. She holds an MFA from Portland State University. She is also a grocer.
For today’s Teacher Spotlight series, we’re pleased to introduce (or perhaps re-introduce) you to Karleigh Frisbie Brogan, who is joining our teaching roster in December, 2025. We’ve been following Karleigh’s writing journey with great excitement after she won a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellowship in Nonfiction. (You can read more about that here.) Since then, she’s gone on to finish and publish her first book HOLDING: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts (Steerforth Press), which author Vanessa Hua praised as “a captivating and gorgeous debut.”
We’re delighted that Karleigh will be teaching three upcoming writing classes at Literary Arts this winter: Ways In: Starting Your Memoir, Truing the Narrative: A Revision Magic Trick, and The Shape of a Life: An 8-Week Memoir Intensive. You can learn more about these classes in the interview below, in which Karleigh also talks with us about her teaching goals, the joys and challenges of writing memoir, and how reading Toni Morrison in high school might indelibly alter the course of your life.
INTERVIEW WITH KARLEIGH FRISBIE BROGAN
Can you tell us more about the upcoming classes you plan to teach? What are they all about and what do you hope students take away from them?
My next class is about how to start a memoir: where to enter it and what to include in that first chapter; how to find what its story is and what it’s really here to say. Those first pages will steer its author, she’ll essentially be creating the directional DNA for the whole book. In January I’m teaching another class that will look to nature’s symmetries to expand the potential of our manuscripts. This is a revision course that works with both short- and long-form pieces, whether they’re “shitty rough drafts” or polished gems. Starting in February, I’ll be teaching an 8-week memoir intensive for those that really want to commit to writing their memoir (or who have already committed!). We’ll do generative exercises, have craft discussions, and read and unpack excerpts from published memoirs. In all of my classes, my main objective is to provide writers with the tools they need to find their voices. I want them to witness the magic that can happen.
Which writers have had the most influence on your own writing life? Or put another way, who would you consider to be the writers in your “literary family tree”?
It all started with Toni Morrison when I was in high school. It went from Sweet Valley High to Song of Solomon overnight, and I couldn’t even recognize what I was reading at first, it was so beautiful. It was like, there was this man standing on top of a building with homemade wings, intending to jump, and there were these little girls running around collecting rose petals made out of fabric. And somebody started singing. And the strangeness and beauty of that scene imprinted my brain forever. I can never unsee it and I am so grateful for it. It was a course correction for me and it was a realization that literature was bigger than life.
After that, in college, Virginia Woolf and Christine Schutt and Annie Dillard broke my brain, they gave me permission to grope the extremities of my writing. I’d say, shorthand, and in terms of my memoir, I consider myself more in the lineage of, or at least sharing shelf-space with, personal essayists and memoirists whose writing is as intimate as it is outward-looking: Carmen Maria Machado, Melissa Febos, Leslie Jamison. But my inspirations are many: George Saunders, James Baldwin, Ottessa Moshfegh, Richard Rodriguez. I love writers for different reasons. Sometimes it’s not even for their writing but for their approach or their philosophy.
In your experience, what are some of the challenges and joys that are unique to writing memoir?
I’d say the biggest challenge is locating the narrowest yet most intense part of your life and expanding on that and only that: the moments in service to the message of that narrow bit, the anecdotes that highlight it. It’s harder than it sounds! You’re chopping out 99.9% of your life. So many of the things you think are so important, and they very well may be, will not make the cut. You have to be very focused and intentional.
The joys are many! For one, you are forced to look at yourself, warts and all. And you have to put it all there on the page. And just the act of articulating your shortcomings provides so much growth for you, especially in terms of compassion. TLDR: writing about yourself helps you love others even more. By that same token, the “ghouls” you write about–the strict/ neglectful/ critical/ smothering/ needy/ distant parents who made you the way you feel compelled to write about, or the toxic exes and whatnot, become humans worthy of kindness, if even just a smidge.
What’s the best writing advice you’ve received from another writer or teacher?
The advice was not direct but through repeated examples, through stories. The advice-giver is podcaster and a writer. He has The Blindboy Podcast, out of Ireland. Blindboy is a neurodivergent genius. In each episode he talks about something seemingly random–Finnish candies, bird poop, the lifecycle of wasps, Irish mythology–and these musings turn into something much larger than just the topic. They become metaphors for life, pearls of wisdom, great philosophical discussions. The beauty is, I don’t even think he tries to make this happen. The connections always seem spontaneous and organic. Anyway, the lesson is this: everything teaches. Every single thing I glimpse or encounter has an inner wisdom, it’s just about paying attention enough to learn it. Everything has the potential to inform my craft, my dedication to art and my reasons for continuing to write.
When it comes to your own writing practice, what are some sources of creative inspiration for you right now?
Definitely the aforementioned authors and podcast! Reading, reading, and more reading is key. I’m reading Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lake right now and I love it. I’m in an art club with a bunch of coworkers and that keeps me inspired. We come together in person and share what we are working on, whether it’s a painting or a quilt or photography. Music hugely inspires–right now it’s a lot of Tori Amos and Lana Del Rey. Piano.
QUESTION LIGHTNING ROUND
Current favorite memoir?
The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevsen
Your teaching style in 5 words?
discovery, phenomenology, microcosms, cozy, patterns
Favorite place to write?
In bed.
Any forthcoming publications or projects?
I’m writing a novel about tinkers, pickers, dreamers, and a neon green lake in Northern California.
If you’d like to register or learn more about Karleigh’s classes, you can find more information by clicking the links below:
Ways In: Starting Your Memoir (one session on December 6) – SOLD OUT
Truing the Narrative: A Revision Magic Trick (one session on January 10)
The Shape of a Life: An 8-Week Memoir Intensive (starts February 11)
