Reflections from Kate Navarra

Kate Navarra published her book A Lump in the Road: My Personal Journey with a Ductal Carcinoma In Situ (DCIS) Diagnosis with Modern Memoirs in 2021. She was referred to us by Bookflow, a cloud-based tool for writers. This Assisted Memoir took 6 months from the day Kate contacted us to the day books arrived on her doorstep, and eBook conversion was completed a month later. We asked Kate to reflect on her publication process and what it’s meant to share her books with others.
—Liz Sonnenberg

1.       In the introduction to your book, you write, “Writing—shared or unshared—has always helped me better understand who I am.” How or why is that so?

Kate Navarra: I have been writing to share my feelings for as long as I can remember. In fact, when I was in middle and high school, I would journal all our family vacations, including all the sarcastic comments my teenaged self could come up with about traveling with my parents. During every trip I made to Alaska, either as a backpacker or later as an archaeologist with the National Park Service, I wrote daily, recording both what happened and my thoughts on what transpired.

 I think I write more for myself than others, and this was true when I wrote my way through my journey with cancer. Sometimes writing made the worry disappear. Sometimes writing gave the things I was trying to say value and meaning.

2.       You wrote a blog throughout your entire DCIS journey. What surprised you most about the difference between blog writing and memoir writing? 

Kate Navarra: When I was first encouraged to blog, I opened a blank Word document and quickly typed everything from what I was feeling, to what I was making for dinner, including many swear words that came to mind. At that point, I was not sure I would make it public. But then I started thinking about how my words could potentially help someone dealing with the same questions and emotions I had. I subscribed to a website and started cutting and pasting what I had written into blog entries so I could share those immediate thoughts with people—and so my friends who were far away could be updated on what was going on with me.

When I started writing my memoir, I read and reread the blog and noticed that these snapshots or moments in time were not the whole story. I hadn’t had a chance to reflect on my journey. My thoughts needed to simmer. Writing a memoir was a chance to make those snapshots flow together and become more of a reflection on those initial thoughts and emotions.

3.       In one of the blog entries that you share in your book, you reflect on the lyrics to the song “Rewrite the Story” from the TV show Smash. You describe it as “a song about renewal,” “about how someone can start over after feeling so lost.” In what way, if any, is your memoir a rewrite as opposed to a recording of your experience?

Kate Navarra: I think when you have a chance to reflect on what has happened to you, you can better understand your experience—and others’ experiences. When I wrote the blog I was recording things, but when I went back to look over what I had recorded, it gave me a chance to think about what others were going through along with me and to examine how others reacted to what was happening to me. I feel like every day we have a chance to start over, and for me “rewriting” my story is a rewrite of how I look back on it and what I gained from it. Cancer still happened to me, but writing about it gave me a new perspective and faith in the idea that I am stronger than I thought and I can do hard things.   

4.       You were encouraged by your support team to write this book as a resource for other women who need something “real,” “raw,” and “practical.” What sort of response have you gotten from readers? 

Kate Navarra: I have had a few family members and close friends share that they had trouble sitting down to read the book because it was so hard to go through the first time and they felt like they were reliving the cancer journey over again. A few other friends have said they finished it in one sitting, and it was cathartic because they were able to see my journey in hindsight. One friend said, “It felt like you were right there beside me sharing your story. I know your book will help so many women!”

5.       For you and others who have been through a cancer diagnosis, you write about “the inability to put into words how it has changed us.” You also say that through writing you found your voice, and through your voice you found strength. Have you encouraged other women who are on a similar journey to write, and has it helped them?

Kate Navarra: A friend of mine was diagnosed with an invasive DCIS six months ago and she has started a blog that discusses remarkably similar things that mine did, including procedures, what nurses discuss with her to distract her, etc. While I won’t say that her blogging is in response to mine, it seems like a very natural outlet to use to let people in while also keeping them at a distance to allow yourself to go through the journey and heal. Survivors have such huge support networks that it can be overwhelming to let everyone know how you are. A blog is a good place to update people in a safe space.

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

Reflections from Edie Daly

Edie Daly published her book entitled Old Lesbian Memory Quilt: Stories Told by Edie Daly on Her 80th Birthday with Modern Memoirs in 2019. This Assisted Memoir took three months to complete from the day she signed the Agreement to work with us to the day books arrived on Edie’s doorstep. We asked Edie to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it’s meant to share her book with others.

-Liz Sonnenberg

1.          Your 2019 book is based on a twelve-square, fabric quilt that you created in 2016 “as an artistic, activist expression of my very self.” The quilt squares are a mix of photographs and artwork. You write, “My life is impossible to pin down in just one picture, one story, or one quilt square, but together the pieces make a whole.” How did you narrow down a lifetime of memories to just twelve squares? What was the selection process like?

Edie Daly: Part of the selection process had to do with stories I want my grandchildren to know about their Gram, and memories are part of our history. As I say in the prologue, “History emerges and flows through memory. Memory helps to shape history, then is reshaped by the history that evolves out of many competing memories.”

2.          Was there an event or story that you considered including but decided to leave out for some reason? Would you like to share a bit about your reasons?

Edie Daly: I didn’t elaborate on the story of collecting and archiving other Old Lesbians’ lives through the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project (OLOHP). We interview women born in the early part of the twentieth century. There are over seven hundred Old Lesbians’ stories archived in the Sophia Smith Collection of Women’s History at Smith College in Northampton, MA. This is an ongoing project and is a long story to tell.

3.          On page 3 of your book, you describe the chapters as “excerpts” from the twelve stories depicted on the quilt. How was the experience of writing about your life different from making the quilt?

Edie Daly: I call these stories “excerpts” because each story has a back story and they are all connected to other people and relationships and the stories that make up the whole of my eighty-four-year life. The creative process of making visual art to tell a story and the process of writing the stories are part of the same creative process and yet very different in nature. I am aware that each person who looks at the quilt or reads the stories adds his or her own perspective to the art, whether visual or written. There is a tactile component to both pieces. When I read to others, I always pass the quilt around to collect my audience’s energies in the fabric. When you hold the book in your hands and read my story, you are reading alone, and the only way that I as a writer know how it feels is for you to write back to me.    

4.          Why was it important to you to create a book after already completing the quilt?

Edie Daly: Actually, I wrote the stories first, culling the journals that I have kept over the past thirty-five years. There are many more stories where these came from. I chose to tell the stories of my birth family, my heterosexual marriage, coming out as a Lesbian, and some of my activist life.

I am passionate about lifting up Lesbian voices because if we don’t share and preserve our Lesbian stories, who will? Opening a women’s bookstore in 1982 and reading second-wave feminist stories and ideologies changed my life forever. There is power in the written word, and I want my children and grandchildren to know a little about my life.

I appreciated the energy and expertise of Megan St. Marie and Ali de Groot as they shepherded me through the process of creating the colorful book that I now can hold in my hand and pass along to those who come after me.

5.          Has writing this memoir changed you in any way? How?

Edie Daly: I have begun calling myself an author. There was something that happened during the process of creating the book that changed my outlook. I accept myself as an author. I said to myself, “If I have a manuscript, I must be an author.” Having the physical book in print has given me the confidence to know that what I have to say is important.

6.          What do you hope your book will do for readers? What sort of feedback have you received?

Edie Daly: I want my heterosexual readers to know that Lesbians lead interesting and exciting lives. And I want my Lesbian readers to see themselves in the general sense and know me in my specific story. Old Lesbian Memory Quilt has received glowing reviews from Sinister Wisdom and Lesbian Connection and great acceptance from my friends and family.

7.          A lot of your activism work centers on the power of listening: witnessing life stories on your Sarajevo trip (p. 53), building self-esteem in your prison work (p. 84), and interviewing with the Old Lesbian Oral Herstory Project (p. 91). When you want to encourage a person to begin talking, what is your favorite question to ask?

Edie Daly: One great question is, “Tell me something about yourself that not many people know.” This is a great way to engage folks to tell me part of their story. As an interviewer, I need to listen carefully and not interject myself into the narrator’s story. It is her story to tell. 

My activist work is ongoing through my local public library. We are producing ReadOut: A Festival of Lesbian Literature online via Zoom. Memories are powerful and shape our lives. It is essential that I listen to others with an open heart.

Edie Daly (l) and her wife, Jackie Mirkin (r), with Edie’s “Old Lesbian Memory Quilt,” which was the basis for the memoir she published with Modern Memoirs, Inc. (2019)

Interested in reading more? You can purchase Edie’s book at the link below: