“Unveiling Grief: Eiren Caffall Reveals the Hidden Wisdom in ‘The Mourner’s Bestiary'”
For the memoir, I started submitting it very early, when I only had a couple of chapters and a book proposal. I got an agent out of that pretty quickly. Didn’t feel quick at the time, but it was pretty quick, and the agent said to me, “I mostly represent science writers and more straight narrative. Do you think you can do that?” And I was so desperate to have a win I said, “Sure, I can learn. You know more than I do. Let’s try to make this work.” I then spent three years writing and rewriting and rewriting the first three chapters and the book proposal to fit into that mold. And when finally, after three years of trying to fit the book into the mold that it was never going to fit into, I broke up with that really good agent during the pandemic, with absolutely no prospect of another agent and just was like, I have to write the book that I would write if I was un-agented, and nobody was coming to help me. If I can do that, I will find the person who knows how to sell that.
