Busting Myths about Parenting and Writing (Video)

About

FEATURING:
Claire Vaye Watkins
Kaitlyn Greenidge
Matthew Salesses 

Moderated by Kelly Luce

The idea that parenthood is a barrier to art creation is outdated, even dangerous—that we create in spite of having children rather than making complex work productively informed by parenthood in all its glory, sorrow, and ambivalence. The COVID-19 pandemic has brought parenting issues to the forefront of the national conversation, and the result has been that the discussions around parenthood specific to writing have evolved, too. Novelists Claire Vaye Watkins (I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness), Kaitlyn Greenidge (Libertie), and novelist and essayist Matthew Salesses (Craft in the Real World) will talk about the struggles, triumphs, stereotypes, and assumptions of writing as parents in the current literary and cultural moment. Moderated by Kelly Luce, author of Pull Me Under and the editor of The Commuter, Electric Literature’s weekly literary magazine for poetry, prose, and graphic narrative. This event took place live on April 5, 2022 as part of Electric Lit's Spring Virtual Salon Series, sponsored by GrubStreet's Muse and the Marketplace, and was followed by an audience Q&A. Runtime is approximately 1 hr and 1 minute.