Bookpleasures.com ishonored to have Sue William Silverman as our guest, an award-winningauthor celebrated for her honest and powerful stories about trauma,identity, and healing. 

With a remarkable literaryjourney, Sue has penned eight books, a mix of memoirs, poetrycollections, and essays, all of which are a testament to her uniqueblend of lyricism and unflinching honesty. 

Her debut memoir, BecauseI Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, not only won theprestigious Association of Writers and Writing Programs Award increative nonfiction but also left an indelible mark on the literarylandscape. 

Her memoir LoveSick: One Woman's Journey through Sexual Addiction, a powerfulnarrative, was not only adapted into a Lifetime TV movie but alsoreceived two PRISM Award nominations, a testament to its impact. 

Another notable work, ThePat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, wasa finalist for Foreword Reviews' IndieFab Book of the Year Award.

Sue is also a respectedteacher and speaker, serving as faculty co-chair of the MFA inWriting Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. 

She has appeared onpopular national TV programs, including The View, AndersonCooper 360, and PBS Books.

Her newest book, SelectedMisdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader (Universityof Nebraska Press, 2025), continues her signature style of honestyand lyricism through a collection of flash essays. 

In this interview, we'llexplore this compelling work and hear more about Sue's creativeprocess and insights.

Norm: Good day, Sue.Thank you for taking part in our interview.

How do you see theinterplay between the 'minor' and 'profound' moments in your essays?Could you share a moment when a minor 'misdemeanor' revealed a deepermeaning for you?

Can you share a momentwhen a minor "misdemeanor" revealed a deeper meaning foryou?

Sue: Hi, Norm. Goodquestion. Of course, all “misdemeanors” are not created equal.

Here is an example: One ofmy overall misdemeanors was my attraction to emotionally dangerousmen.

But it started “small.”In high school, for example, I had a serious crush on Jamie, who was,seemingly, a sweet, innocent young man. 

However, after writing abouthim, I realized he actually didn’t treat me well in that he brokeup with me, returned to me, then broke up with me again—severaltimes. 

During the writing process, I came to realize he wasn’tquite the sweet guy I idolized in high school. Additionally, whilewriting these essays, I realized he was the first in a series of moreand more dangerous men. 

In short, by the time I was a freshman incollege, I had affairs with married men, men old enough to be myfather. 

During the writing process, I came to understand that my ownunfortunate decisions around men began earlier than I realized, andthat the degree of danger, over time, escalated.

Norm: Your work blendsmemoir and essay form in a fragmented, non-linear structure. How doyou decide which memories or moments to include and how to arrangethem? 

How do you think thenon-linear structure shapes the reader's experience?

Sue: The non-linearstructure makes for a more interesting book. To write chronologicallycan be (not always, but can be) kind of boring. 

It’s too easy tofall into a pattern of writing along the lines of “this happened,then this happened, then this next thing happened.” 

In other words,one event follows the next, but there’s no thematic connectionamong the events. No cause-and-effect. Each moment is disparate.

A non-linear structure,however, provides the opportunity to write thematically. Each essay,in some way, speaks to and enhances the theme—deepens the theme. 

Therefore, the book conveys a sense of an emotional journey; there’sa connection among the essays: because X happens, Y now happens.

This also helps meunderstand which essays belong in the book, which don’t. If anessay doesn’t speak to the theme, it’s kicked out (or saved foranother book). If, however, the essay deepens the theme, it’sincluded.

Norm: The collection openswith "Strange Entanglements," exploring childhood andfamily dynamics. How did revisiting these formative experiences shapeyour understanding of your identity as you wrote? Did any childhoodmemory feel different or surprising as you wrote it down?

Sue: Just to be upfront,my father sexually misloved me while I was growing up. But no onetalked about it. I never told anyone. I thought this idea of silencepertained only to my home, to me.

Then, when I wrote theessay in this book, “The Silence Detector,” I had an epiphany.This essay revolves around the first time I visited a high schoolfriend, at her home, and I noticed cigarette burns on the arms of hermuch younger sister. 

I don ’t recall if I was about to say anythingabout the burns or not, but immediately my friend whispered “sssh,”indicating not to speak. 

While no one in my family said “sssh,”that was clearly the message I received growing up: Don’t tellanyone what my father was doing to me. 

At the time, I only had avague understanding about the idea of silence in households wherechildren are harmed. By writing the essay I came to understand howpervasive and damaging it is, how it allows the damage to continue.

 Because of this prevalent insistence on silence, I never told anyoneabout my father until I was in my 30s.

Norm: How do you balancepoetic, lyrical prose with the rawness required to depict trauma andmental health struggles authentically? How do you choose when to usepoetic language versus straightforward honesty?

Sue: Interesting questionbecause I think poetic language—which is to say metaphoriclanguage—is more emotionally honest, not less. 

Let me give you anexample. One essay, “Psych Ward, Drought,” is about a time in myadult life when my unexamined life was catching up on me—all myemotional misdemeanors. 

So, ok, I could havestraightforwardly written: “One summer when I lived in Georgia, myhusband was out of town, and the air was hot and stifling. It hadn’trained in weeks. 

And, honestly, what with the heat—on top of myhusband’s abandonment—I was lost and depressed and thought I washaving a nervous breakdown.”

But here is what Iactually wrote in the essay: “My fantasies ranged from cloudy skiesto soft drops of water to a deluge of biblical proportions. In thedryness—maybe I fantasized it, maybe I didn’t—I heard randomthings cracking. 

Like coffee cups in the pantry. Egg shells in therefrigerator. Needles of loblollies. Legs of daddy longlegs. Strandsof my hair. The top of my skull. This was the final motivation Ineeded to drive to the psych ward at the local hospital on September1. I’d had it.” 

In other words, bydescribing sensory images outside of me (coffee cups, egg shells,strands of hair), I metaphorically depicted that interior feeling ofloss and depression: that I was cracking. 

In this way, I am betterable to bring the reader inside the experience. A reader can’trelate to abstract words such as “loss” or “depression.”

Those words are generic. But by showing the feeling metaphoricallyvia slanted tangible imagery, the reader can feel or imagine what thenarrator is feeling.

Not to say there aren’ttimes when I write in a straightforward manner. I do. But the timesto write metaphorically (i.e. more poetically) are those moments whenyou want the reader to experience that which you, as narrator, areexperiencing.

Norm: Two distinctnarrative voices—youthful innocence and reflective wisdom—interactthroughout the book. 

How did you develop thisduality, and what does it allow you to express? Was it challenging tokeep your youthful and reflective voices distinct?

Sue: Yes, that is achallenge to weave together those two voices, but doing so is crucialto creative nonfiction. In a craft book I wrote (Acetylene TorchSongs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul), I differentiatethese two voices as the “Unaware Voice” and the “Aware Voice.”Both are crucial to a narrative.

The Unaware Voice depictsthe events as you observe them at the time that things happened. Forexample, in the above example from my essay “Psych Ward, Drought,”I did need to let the reader straightforwardly know that 1) it wassummer in Georgia, and hot; 2) I was depressed. 

Also, earlier in theessay, I tell the reader that my husband is out of town. In short,the Unaware Voice must offer the facts of what happened. But thevoice of this narrator is limited; she doesn’t know what the factsmean. She can only tell you the surface story of what happened.

Enter the Aware Voice,who, in effect, is the author adding those metaphorical layers inorder to deepen and make sense of the original experience.

 It’s theAware Voice, in the above example, who wrote about feeling as if thecups, the egg shells, the strands of hair were cracking. The job ofthe Aware Voice is to discover the metaphors of the experience, andthese metaphors shine a light on how the narrator is feeling—herinteriority. 

In sum: the Unaware Voicesays “this is what happened.” The Aware Voice says “this iswhat it means.” 

Norm: Everyday objectsbecome powerful symbols in your essays. Could you share examples ofsome that held particular significance for you and why? Whicheveryday object in your essays holds the strongest personal meaning?

Sue: To return again to“Psych Ward, Drought,” those everyday objects like coffee cups,eggs shells, strands of hair become not so everyday once they’retransformed metaphorically. 

Everyday objects are crucial in creativenonfiction because that’s where we discover our metaphors. All ametaphor is is an everyday object described in such a way (slanted)to cast light on the narrator’s interiority.

On the cover of SelectedMisdemeanors is an image of a goldfish, belly up. This goldfish, inthe essay “Love Deferment,” is a metaphor (in the context of theessay) not just for physical death, but for betrayal in matters oflove as well as the absence of love. 

In the essay itself, my unlovingboyfriend is off at boot camp; I buy a goldfish for company; I betraymy boyfriend by having an affair with his roommate. So one of mymisdemeanors is the relationship with the roommate. 

Additionally,when the roommate breaks up with me, I’m so distraught I forget tofeed the goldfish. Who dies. Another of my misdemeanors. But thisgoldfish is a metaphor for me because he encapsulates more than justmy misdemeanor of forgetting to feed him. 

The fish is a metaphor forthe loss of love.

Each essay in SelectedMisdemeanors revolves around a metaphoric image or sensory detaillike that in order to deepen the narrative.

Norm: How do you decidewhich memories to bring forward in your writing?

Sue: In my first fourbooks of creative nonfiction, I focused on what might be considered“large” memories, experiences, or themes such as (in my firstbook) growing up in dangerous family and (in my second book LoveSick) recovering from sexual addiction. 

My third book, The Pat BooneFan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew, explores my verymisguided, yet sincere, search for spirituality. 

And, in my fourth,How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences, I focus on my fearssurrounding death—defining death rather broadly—by includingemotional and spiritual “deaths.”

After exploring these“large” memories, now, in Selected Misdemeanors: Essays at theMercy of the Reader, I’m able to write about those seemingly“smaller” memories. That’s the beauty of the flash essay.

Here’s how I see thedifference between large and small memories—or moments in a life: 

It’s an interesting phenomenon, but, when you think of it, manywriters (initially, myself) tend to more immediately examine thosebig life events: marriage, divorce, unhappy childhoods, addiction,etc. 

But, over the course of a life, in many instances, these bigevents don’t take up as much time as all the rest of the time ofour lives.

And all the rest of thetime is, in fact, a lot of time. We see small moments of beauty,miniature forms of betrayal, snippets of loss. 

These brief incrementsthat make up a day, a week, a month are significant. Or can be if wewrite them. For example, that goldfish I mention above: I could onlydevelop a narrative about a dead goldfish in a flash essay.

Flash, then, is a focus onwhat we can learn about the self—and its place in the world—byexamining small increments of time between the big life events.

Norm: How do you maintainvulnerability while protecting your privacy?

What challenges did youface in writing about complex topics such as obsessive love,addiction, and mental illness? How did you overcome these challengesand maintain your honesty and vulnerability in your writing?

Sue: The main challengewasn’t so much in the actual writing, but in the ten years that ledup to writing creative nonfiction. 

In short, I spent ten yearscloaking my true narrative in fiction—and I have about five awfulunpublished) novels (hiding in drawers) to show for it. I was scaredto write my truth all those years, so, unconsciously, I avoided it.

But once I began my firstmemoir, I honestly did not face significant emotional challenges. Ileft those behind me. It was actually a relief to finally tell mytruth! Now I controlled the narrative. 

Now I had a voice. It’sempowering to set my own true words down on paper. It lightens theload. No longer did I have to use all that energy staying silent. 

I had already survived mypast. If I was strong enough to have survived it, I was strong enoughto write it.

Revealing decades-oldsecrets is vulnerable, sure. But if you’re going to fully commit toa creative nonfiction memoir or essay, well, you also have to committo vulnerability. 

What did I find? Readers respond to vulnerability.If I write of my pain, it will touch a reader’s pain. If I write ofloss, it will touch yours. Because of this relationship that developsbetween writer and reader, I discovered we’re all empoweredtogether.

Norm: Your essays offerboth personal confession and a hand of solidarity to readers facingsimilar issues. Was fostering this sense of community intentional?

Sue: Initially, no. In myfirst book, I just had to write, write, write about growing up inthis dangerous family. After spending those ten years writingfiction, I wrote my first memoir in about three months—as if in abrain fever. It just fell out of me. 

After the book was published,and I began to receive messages from other women with similarexperiences, I began to understand this idea of community.

Even now, though, duringthe writing process, I maintain the focus on the writing: as itshould be. First and foremost, after all, I need to get the wordsdown on paper, and revise, revise, revise until I’ve written asbest I can. 

Only after, do I turn my attention to publication and theoutside world. And, with every book, every time, I do realize theimportance of this sense of community. 

Norm: Where can ourreaders find out more about you and Selected Misdemeanors?

Sue: Of course you canvisit my PERSONAL WEBSITE  Also, mybooks are available wherever books are sold, but here are some directlinks:

AMAZON: 

bookshop.org: 

University of NebraskaPress:

Norm: As we wrap up ourinterview, in a world often dominated by quick, superficialinteractions, what role do you believe your essays and storytellingserve in fostering deeper connections among readers? 

Sue: If you respond to myvulnerability, you might be better able to access yours. As I saidabove, if I write of loss, it will touch yours. Vulnerability andhonesty foster empathy. And wouldn’t it be beautiful if we all hadmore empathy in our lives—and in the world?!

Norm: Thanks once again and good luck with all of your endeavors.

Follow Here To Read Norm's Review of SelectedMisdemeanors: Essays at the Mercy of the Reader