FROM OUR PRODUCER & HOST
KELLY DUMAR
(she/her) Boston based poet, playwright, daily blogger, and leader of creative writing organizations—in person and online—for 30 years. Kelly's philosophy about teaching and coaching is simple: Your stories are not only meaningful, they are beautiful, and they deserve to be written, crafted and shared.
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A Great Memoir is Like a Great Friendship
Laura L. Engel, new memoirist and new friend
is the Journal of Expressive Writing's OPEN MIC Featured Author on
Thursday, May 19, 2022, 7-8:30 p.m. ET.
Laura is the author of the brand new memoir:
You’ll Forget This Ever Happened––Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960’s
When a memoirist trusts the reader the way she trusts a close friend, we can tell. It’s mutual. The more she reveals about her story, the more we listen, open our hearts and minds, and become a beneficiary of the treasure—her healing and insights, truth and beauty.
"When you write your memoir you will understand, perhaps for the first time, the significance of your life through the language, images and emotions you craft from the memory."
— Author Maureen Murdock (Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory)
In Laura Engel’s compelling memoir, we experience the terrible irony framed by the title: she will not forget this experience of giving up her newborn son at the age of 17 as an unwed mother.
Engel cannot forget—and doesn’t want to. And the reader will never forget this finely crafted journey of recovery.
Writing scenes that we feel personally invited into, Engel conveys details that make her experience of living in the strange home for unwed mothers come alive and feel relatable. Growing up in Mississippi and giving birth in New Orleans in 1967, she gives us a sense of how her story fits the geographical, cultural and social influences that shaped it at the time.
Engel's journey is a powerful story of longing, secrecy, guilt, self-discovery, kindness, grit, and backbone. Despite the pressures from her father and the director of the unwed mother’s home, Engel demonstrates her integrity when she refuses to create a fake name for herself upon arrival. Under acute cultural, social and familial pressures—not to mention shame—and an absence of support for keeping the son she loved carrying, Engel, a teenager alone in a law office, signs the document allowing him to be adopted.
Throughout her memoir, as Engel encounters challenges finding her way through the pregnancy, forced adoption and later, an unhappy marriage, we’re engaged with Engel as she shows courage, resilience and the capacity to heal and grow. Throughout, Engel encounters injustices that inflame our passion and inspire our advocacy—but never our pity. We feel inspired by the way she takes risks and finds her way to begin again and again. Through her narrative, insightful self-revelations, struggles, and willingness to expose her trauma, Engel creates an experience of intimacy for the reader that establishes a soulful friendship.
Laura’s memoir takes the reader on the kind of journey Maureen Murdock describes that far transcends her personal healing:
"When women work on reclaiming the lost part of themselves, they're also working on reclaiming the lost soul of the culture as well."— Maureen Murdock
I hope you will join us for this reading by Laura on Thursday, May 19 at 7pm ET, to discover what was lost and what is reclaimed by You’ll Forget This Ever Happened––Secrets, Shame, and Adoption in the 1960’s. The event will be followed by a Q&A and an OPEN MIC of 15 writers reading their poetry, prose and more for 3 min each.
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See you then!
Kelly
More About Laura L. Engel
Originally from Mississippi, Laura L. Engel was transplanted to San Diego’s East County over 50 years ago. She is married with 5 grown children and 10 cherished grandchildren.
In 2016, Laura retired from a 35-year career in the corporate world with plans to quietly catch up on hobbies and travel with her husband, Gene. Instead, she found herself busier than ever taking writing classes and writing up a storm. She received a certificate for Marni Freedman’s program Advanced Memoir 101 in 2017 and discovered an extraordinary community of memoir writers in San Diego at the San Diego Writers Ink.
Since starting her book in 2017, Laura has had scenes from her memoir published in three Shaking The Tree Anthologies with a fourth due for publication in 2023. She has won a place in two Memoir Showcase performances with scenes from her memoir performed by professional actors at the North Coast Rep theatre in Solana Beach, California.
Since January 2018, Laura has served as President for the San Diego Memoir Writers Association. An active member of the International Women Writers Guild, Laura attended the 2018 and 2019 Summer Conference at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pa. She is also a member of the San Diego Writers Ink and San Diego Writers and Editors Guild.
In Spring of 2019, Laura was interviewed by Dani Shapiro for her Family Secrets Podcast. Her podcast interview has reached over 1 million listeners.
Check out Laura’s website at: lauralengel.com
Read Laura L. Engel's, "A God Thing—The Drum Roll of Synchronicity" published in the Journal of Expressive Writing.
REGISTER NOW to attend/hear Laura followed by our OPEN MIC with 15 writers who will read their work.
All OPEN MIC events are FREE to attend and OPEN TO ALL, but you do need to register through Eventbrite here.
The Journal of Expressive Writing OPEN MIC is produced and hosted by Kelly DuMar.
Read about our upcoming featured authors on our OPEN MIC page.
Journal of Expressive Writing Submissions
Our Call for Submissions is always open,
because there is never a deadline on creativity. Never a fee to submit.
New content published weekly. All voices wanted!
About the Editor:
Jennifer A. Minotti (she/her) is a Writer-in-Residence at the Center for Women's Health and Human Rights at Suffolk University. For the past 25 years, she has dedicated her professional life toward working for the betterment of society. For 17 years, Jen worked at Education Development Center (EDC)—a global non-profit working to improve education, health, and economic opportunities worldwide—in a variety of technology, research, writing, and leadership roles.
In 2012, Jen founded the Women's Writing Circle as a means to merge her passions for expressive writing, positive psychology, community organizing, women’s health, and social activism. In 2020, she founded the Journal of Expressive Writing in order to provide a place for sharing expressive writing, believing that we need this space on a fundamental, human level, individually and collectively. Jen is a graduate of Boston University (B.S.) and Columbia University (M.A., M.Ed). Her writing has appeared in numerous refereed journals, anthologies and literary publications.
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