The Art and Challenge of Memoir: Reading & Conversation with Sara Rauch and Julie Scolnik

Join author, editor, and Western MA writing instructor Sara Rauch and author, concert flutist, and Mistral Music director Julie Scolnik for a reading from their recent memoirs:  XO (Rauch) an autobiographical essay / memoir investigating mythologies of romantic love, connections to the divine, and the death/rebirth cycle; and Paris Blue (Scolnik), a decades-spanning story about the tenacious grip of first love and a lifelong quest for answers and release. The readings will be followed by a discussion with PVWW Founder Joy Baglio and Assistant Director Kate Senecal about the process of writing memoir/personal essays and the challenging and cathartic themes the book explores, as well as some of the challenges memoirists face in shaping their own narratives. Those who'd like to participate more actively in the discussion are invited to read XO and Paris Blue in advance of the event and come with questions and thoughts on the books, the ideas they raise, and the memoir-writing process!

SARA RAUCH is the author of What Shines from It: Stories, which won the Electric Book Award. Her prose has also appeared widely in literary magazines journals, including Paper Darts, Meetinghouse, Hobart, Split Lip, and So to Speak. She holds an MFA from Pacific University, and lives with her family in Holyoke, MA. In XO, her recent memoir and second book, Sara Rauch is in a long-term, committed relationship with another woman when she begins a low-residency MFA in fiction. Though it goes against the promises she’s made, she finds herself pulled into an intense affair with a married man, a well-known writer in the program. More than an essay about bisexual infidelity and the resulting heartbreaks, XO unfolds Rauch’s story like a map of psychic terrain, allowing the author to explore her longstanding obsessions with romantic love, personal faith and belief systems, and the stories we tell ourselves to get through our ever changing lives. XO was published in spring 2022 by Autofocus.Find her online at www.sararauch.com.

JULIE SCOLNIK is a concert flutist and the founding artistic director of Mistral Music, a chamber music series which since 1997 has been known for its virtuosic artists, imaginative programming, and the personal rapport she establishes with her audiences.  Paris Blue (Koehler Books) is her debut memoir, a story that has lingered in the corridors of her psyche for over forty years, about young love, heartache, and the role of memory in our lives, set against a backdrop of classical music and Paris. Since Julie's treatment and recovery from breast cancer in 2005, she has found ways to play and curate benefit concerts which raise funds for support for underserved women with the disease. She lives in Boston with her husband, physicist Michael Brower, and her two cats. They have two adult children, also musicians, pianist Sophie Scolnik-Brower and cellist Sasha Scolnik-Brower, with whom she frequently performs. Find her online at www.JulieScolnik.com.

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