Unlocking Creativity: Elissa Altman Reveals the Radical Power of Saying ‘Yes’ in Memoir Writing
When Elissa published her first memoir, Poor Man’s Feast in 2013, she didn’t fathom the firestorm it would ignite within her family. A single paragraph in that book revealed information about her paternal family history that was meant to stay hidden, though no one thought to tell Elissa that it was a secret.
Her father’s living family reacted to the memoir’s publication in the most extreme and incomprehensible of ways, cutting her off completely. No one would speak to her, she was blocked on social media, eliminated from family events and announcements, denied access to the family burial plot, and her existence as the only child of her father erased from online records.