Hawthorne Books

Accomplished short story writer Monica Wesolowska discusses her new memoir, Holding Silvan, about choosing humane death over doomed life for her newborn son.

Zola BooksFor decades you had published only fiction. But after years of trying to capture Silvan in fictional form—as in, briefly, your 2005 short story “Lenny, My Poet, and I”—you ended up writing a beautiful memoir in a mere three months. What was it about the memoir versus the fiction format that ultimately won you over?

Monica WesolowskaThanks for referencing “Lenny, My Poet, and I.” That’s one of my favorite stories, and it was the first piece of fiction I completed after Silvan died. But for the most part, I found myself frustrated by fiction after he died. I’d get through several drafts of a story and suddenly feel as though I were playing a game. I had trouble reading fiction as well—and that had never happened in my reading life. Instead, I kept looking for memoirs of loss. Memoir was a genre I’d pretty much ignored, and I was electrified by how much good stuff there was out there. I devoured memoirs by Isabel Allende, Vivian Gornick, Genevieve Jurgensen, and Abigail Thomas. I loved how they shaped the randomness of life. Fiction does that too, but in memoir I felt more aware of the chaos that was being shaped. That felt very powerful to me. I’m not sure that memoir has permanently “won me over,” but it’s true that this story finally demanded to be told as memoir. I realized that my problem in trying to write fiction and even to read it was that no story felt as sad as mine. I had to write my own story first to regain enough empathy to make the leap back into fiction.

To read the entire interview, go to Zola Books.