From McDonald's to literary festivals, in search of kindred souls
Ever since my very first job, I have sought community at work. That became even more important when I became a writer.
When I turned sixteen, my mother asked me where I was going to get a job. Now that I was of legal age, not working was no longer an option. My parents had a strong Protestant work ethic and believed in the necessity and power of work to shape a responsible human.
My mother drove me around to restaurants and offices so I could fill out applications with my minimal experiences. I had worked as a babysitter for our neighbors for many years. I had spent a summer scraping and painting a side of our large, colonial house. That was about it. I hadn’t even been particularly good at or enthusiastic about either task. Children bored me and I hated standing on a ladder in the baking sun
No one wanted to hire me.
Finally, we stopped at the one place nearby that was always hiring: McDonald’s. We had only very rarely been allowed to eat at McDonald’s, my frugal parents insisting on healthy, homecooked meals. But apparently my mother thought it was fine for me to work there.
They hired me. I donned my maroon, pinstriped uniform with dread, hoping that no one I knew would ever see me in it, and punched my first time card.
I was surprised to find that I loved working at McDonald’s. I liked the orderly kitchen, learning the rituals of piecing together each item. I liked cooking the perfect circles of pancakes and eggs. I enjoyed working the cash register alongside my friend Gina, who studied ballet with me.
Above all, I loved my coworkers. We had time to talk and joke as we worked. We bargained with each other, trading tasks for others we preferred. They fryer? The stove? The register? I was part of a large and friendly team of people, mostly older and cooler than I was. I was a shy child and teenager, and work gave me a structure for interacting with other people, an excuse for starting a conversation.
On the rare occasions my parents let me work closings (they didn’t want to have to pick me up that late at night), I was thrilled. Our manager Johnny would lock the doors, crank up the music, and we would dance as we mopped the floors and cleaned the kitchen. I had an enormous crush on Johnny, and was heartbroken when I discovered he was gay. But I still loved listening to him tease my coworkers and felt grateful when he teased me. I felt included.
I so enjoyed the community I found at McDonald’s that I found myself reluctant to leave at the end of summer to return to school. Most of my colleagues weren’t leaving; this was more than a summer job for them.
Another of my managers, Dan, kept in touch. A fellow reader, he sent me enormous boxes of books. On Valentine’s Day he sent me the biggest heart-shaped box of chocolates I had ever seen, which I shared with my dormmates. These gifts were accompanied by kind, restrained notes that asked nothing of me but a letter in return, which I was glad to send.
I haven’t been inside a McDonald’s since that summer (and have been a vegetarian since I was 17). But my experience of this early work community primed me for a lifetime of seeking community through work.
This is one reason writing conferences have always been so important to me. The only community I have here in my office is my cat, Ciboulette, and I can’t say she’s a focused writer. Writing is a necessarily solitary endeavor, and I get lonely. Since 2006, long before my cancer was diagnosed, I have been living abroad, usually in a non-Anglophone country. I have met other authors in these countries, who write in Arabic, Spanish, or Uzbek. While I have always worked hard to learn the language of our host countries, I have never mastered one enough to write a novel in it. Or to fully immerse myself in the local literary world. I thus have always relied on anglophone literary conferences in the United States or the United Kingdom to meet colleagues and promote my work.
I began going to conferences when my novel-in-progress (which became The Ambassador’s Wife), won the William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition novel award of the New Orleans Words and Music Literary Festival. I could not have landed in a more welcoming and inspiring community. Spending time with the writers of New Orleans has always been one of the most magical experiences of my life. I still hold every one of them close in my heart. It pains me to have missed so much time with my beloved friends there, some of whom have now died. I felt at home in New Orleans, felt wild creativity all around me in the music, the theatre, the people. I talked to everyone. And they talked back.
I then discovered the A Room of Her Own retreat in New Mexico, the Hands on Literary Festival and Masquerade Ball in New Orleans, and the massive Association of Writers and Writing Programs’ yearly conference, in a different city each year. These conferences and festivals were lifelines to literary community. At AWP I got to see writing friends from Los Angeles, Seattle, Dallas, Minnesota, New Orleans, New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Nebraska all in one place. We met up at panels, parties, long queues for coffee, and found quiet corners in which we could talk. I always left the conference feeling high as a kite on literary inspiration and companionship.
I always brought along something from wherever we were living to give away, usually chocolate. For several years in a row I filled my suitcase with Bolivian chocolate bars, handing them out to every acquaintance or kind stranger I encountered. “I’m bribing you to be my friend,” I said, only half in jest. Even now, sometimes I’ll run into a writer who will say to me, “oh you’re the one who was always handing out Bolivian chocolate!”
The more we’ve moved, the more I have become a compulsive community seeker, a joiner extraordinaire. I am a member of authors’ unions in both the US and the UK, PEN America, the National Association of Writers in Education (UK), the European Association of Creative Writing Programmes (EACWP), The Trouble Club, Pen Parentis, the Association of American Women in Europe, the BritsNîmes Club, and The Isolation Journals substack group. Sometimes I think I should reduce my memberships, focus on one group. But I don’t like to close off opportunities for connection. I don’t just join writing organizations, I also join hiking groups, cancer groups (as mentioned in a previous newsletter), and book groups. My appetite for connection is insatiable.
My opportunities for involvement with most of these groups has been restricted for the last couple of years. Since I was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in April 2022, I haven’t been able to travel beyond countries in which I receive medical care. This means I haven’t been able to attend any conferences and festivals, that I have not been able to reconnect with the scores of writers I adore all across the United States and the United Kingdom. I fret that I have been forgotten and left behind. Before my recurrence in August, I had planned to attend the AWP in Kansas City with my friend Liz Silver (author of the important new novel The Majority—pick up a copy today! https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-majority-elizabeth-l-silver/19082702?ean=9780593331088). Neither of us ended up being able to go, as both of us were recovering from medical issues.
Even were I well enough to travel, my treatments left me too exhausted and overwhelmed and busy with appointments to participate in events I normally would attend, like the EACWP’s symposiums and teacher trainings.
This is one of the many reasons I have been feeling adrift here in France, where I do not (yet) have literary community. I long for the in-person companionship of a fellow professional writer with whom I can trade manuscripts, pick apart books and ideas. I have a feeling kindred authors lurk somewhere around here, I just have to find them. God knows no shortage of writers have flocked to France over the centuries. I’ll find them eventually.
Now I also seek community here, with those of you who take time out of your busy lives to read my posts each week. You matter to me. It makes an enormous difference in my life to hear from you, to see new subscribers, and to read comments. I’d love to hear about the communities that nurture you.
Well, I am envious of your desire to find community! Because I’m weird and self-conscious and people avoidant, my main community comprises octopus, who, as you might know, are surely only bent on being man teachers. They also don’t talk a lot and are always hogging the soirée sandwiches in all of their hands.