I owe you an apology

(or maybe I don’t?—but that’s sort of the point)

There’s something I often do, which I suspect you might recognize. After I talk to someone (a friend, a colleague, someone I’ve just met at a reading, the Pope) or have a conversation in any kind of group, I immediately go home and replay the conversation. Not once. Not twice. Many, many times. I sift through the words for the moment I said the crucial faux pas; surely, if I sift through the dialogue long enough, I’ll find the offhand remark that I’m now completely positive has permanently altered how people think of me.

Sometimes I call people to apologize.

Reader, are you surprised to know that I am apologizing for things that they don’t remember?

The apologies are always a little bewildering for the recipient. What? No. I didn’t even notice that. Are you okay?

I am okay. I am also, apparently, someone who carries conversations around in my body for days, worrying them like a scrap of cloth in the pocket, searching for the flaw that will end me forever.

I tell you this because I've been quiet here for a long time. And the silence has been its own kind of replaying. I wonder if you noticed. I wonder what you thought. I wonder whether the distance I put between us had changed something.

So I’m here now, and I want to explain.

I am closing The Unexpected Shape Writing Academy.

This is not a sudden or panicked decision. It is, in the way of most real and serious decisions, something I’ve known for longer than I’ve said out loud. The Academy has been the work of years—my curriculum, my teaching, the community we built there—and closing it is a real ending, not just a pivot.

But here is what I want you to know: one of the reasons I’m closing it is to come back to this.

To Reasons for Living. To you.

The Academy required so much of me in the best and most demanding sense. I spent more time working on the Academy than a typical nine-to-five would have asked of me. I was also never able to operate at a profit.

What it didn’t always leave room for was the novels and short stories and essays that my editors are waiting for. It didn’t leave room for this quieter, stranger, more meandering kind of writing in Reasons for Living. The kind where I tell you about calling people to apologize for things they don’t remember. The kind that doesn’t need to instruct or guide, but just needs to be as true as I can be.

I miss this. I’m choosing this.

Before the Academy closes, I’m doing one final thing.

I’m offering everything—the complete Academy, every class, every guest lecture—as a bundle, for $197.

If you’ve been in my orbit here on Reasons for Living and never found your way into the Academy, this is the door, and it is genuinely the last time it will be open.

Here’s what’s inside:

✦ The Pathway — the full memoir curriculum I built for writers whose lives require a different kind of map: non-linear, humane, designed for fluctuating energy and interrupted days. We go through Pre-Writing classes, Writing classes, and Publication classes.

✦ The Canopy — 12 guest lectures from writers I deeply admire: Hanif Abdurraqib, Leslie Jamison, Melissa Febos, Meghan O’Rourke, Stephanie Foo, Suleika Jaouad, and more. Real craft conversations, not inspiration for its own sake.

✦ The Compass — the “Dream Hunting with Limitations” process for building a writing practice that works with your life

At regular prices, this totals $4,116 at $147 a class.

The bundle is $197, and it closes on June 15th.

I want to be honest with you about why I’m telling you this here, on Reasons for Living. It’s because you are the people I think of when I think about why I made The Unexpected Shape Writing Academy in the first place. You’re the kind of writers who are asking hard questions about why we write, and especially about what it means to make art in the middle of a life that is complicated and sometimes very hard.

The Academy is for those of you who want the craft, the structure, and the instruction. It’s for those for you who desire the practical machinery of how to write memoir and send it into the world.

And Reasons for Living is for everything that surrounds the reasons we keep going when the writing is hard and the days are a mess and we’re lying awake replaying conversations that the other person has long forgotten.

Both of these things matter to me. I made them both for you.

The Academy sale closes June 15th. After that, it’s gone.

And then—I’ll see you here, more often. I promise.

With love,

P.S. If you have questions about the Academy before the 15th, just reply. I’ll write back.