Elissa Altman

United States

Writer and Authro at Freelance

Author of PERMISSION (2025), MOTHERLAND, Poor Man’s Feast, Treyf, many essays, memoir faculty, editor, musician. Speaking engagements @AUAgency

Articles

What's got my attention this week #93

1 week ago | theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com | Daisy Goodwin |Leah McLaren |Elissa Altman

If you enjoy my work here on The Shift and would like to receive two new posts a week, access the archive, join the bookclub etc why not become paid subscriber. (Also, Sausage the cat will thank you.)SCROLLING• Tracy Chapman gave a rare interview to celebrate the vinyl rerelease of her debut album. (Gift link)• on what she learnt when her mother left. • is giving up keeping up. • If you missed yesterday’s newsletter, here’s my chat with on learning to give yourself permission.
Poor Man's Feast: On Walking and Finding Beauty in a Time of Trouble – PRINT Magazine

2 weeks ago | printmag.com | Kim Tidwell |Elissa Altman

(This is not good, I don’t care how age-blind one is.)At first, he spoke in decades — we’re all from the same decade, right? he said, looking at us across the table — so that we could anchor ourselves in time the way writers do in narrative. If readers don’t know where they are in time and space, they become untethered; we have all had this experience, and we end up wondering how did I get here, have I been here before, who are these people.
I Wrote About My Grandmother's Abandonment. Then My Family Abandoned Me.

3 weeks ago | oprahdaily.com | Elissa Altman

Every family has a core legend, a koan—a defining, foundational, sometimes cryptic narrative around which its generations are coiled. Left unresolved, it will pop relentlessly back to the surface like a rubber bath toy. It is the story that appears when we least expect it, in primary relationships both successful and failed, in parenthood, at work, in recovery meetings, in the patterns that our therapists tell us they see.
“Retribution Masquerading As Art.” Elissa Altman on the Problem with Revenge Writing

1 month ago | lithub.com | Elissa Altman

This first appeared in Lit Hub’s Craft of Writing newsletter—sign up here. Article continues after advertisementWhen my father died suddenly and violently in 2002, I was treated so badly by a close and trusted family member—the one he always told me to go to if anything ever happened to him—that, in hindsight, it was almost comical.
Poor Man's Feast: The Veil Between Sustenance and Violence – PRINT Magazine

1 month ago | printmag.com | Elissa Altman |Kim Tidwell

I’ve been making notes for this essay now for a week, maybe longer, and certainly before the horrific international embarrassment that occurred in my country last week, the likes of which have never before been witnessed on the public stage, not even in the early days of World War 2, or Watergate, or Vietnam.
Poor Man's Feast: Making the Choice to Keep Creating – PRINT Magazine

1 month ago | printmag.com | Elissa Altman |Kim Tidwell

I have spent the last few days in a studio with a wonderful producer, recording the audio edition of Permission. This is the fourth time I’ve done this, each time for a different book, with a different producer, in a different studio. Each experience has been an excellent one; I suppose it could have gone the other way, but it didn’t, and this time was no different.
What's got my attention this week #78

2 months ago | theshiftwithsambaker.substack.com | Mona Eltahawy |Elissa Altman |Leah McLaren

The Shift With Sam Baker is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a paid subscriber. SCROLLING• Gisèle Pelicot has been named Person of the Year by The New European. Jamie Klingler declares Pelicot her “own personal Che Guevara”. £• Sarah Jessica Parker is judging the Booker Prize. (Gift link.)• “Assad has gone, but a revolution that doesn’t free women is no revolution at all.” Brilliant piece by .
Poor Man's Feast: Give Yourself Permission – PRINT Magazine

Jan 13, 2025 | printmag.com | Elissa Altman |Kim Tidwell

It is not enough for a teacher of memoir to tell you that we are the art-making species; that it is our God-given right to create; that no child, having been given a pad and some crayons will ever say, to quote Elizabeth Gilbert, Nope, not feeling it today; that far more women than men withhold their storytelling until someone tells them it’s okay to do so (a broad generalization, but men usually just do it and apologize later); that you have every right to say whatever it is you need to say,...
Poor Man's Feast: The Things We Remember and Why – PRINT Magazine

Dec 16, 2024 | printmag.com | Elissa Altman

I’m like a bad actor, standing on stage, unsure of where to put my hands. It’s an old and engrained thing; although I love giving gifts, getting them makes me incredibly self-conscious, and while I’ve tried to unpack why over the years, I could never quite put my finger on it.
Poor Man's Feast: On Sustenance When the World Wants to Fight – PRINT Magazine

Dec 2, 2024 | printmag.com | Elissa Altman |Kim Tidwell

Poor Man’s Feast: On Sustenance When the World Wants to FightPosted inCreative Voices A few weeks ago, I was at my local middle school, standing on line and waiting to check in with the poll workers in order to vote in our elections. The workers are, for the most part, retired teachers and grandparents; people who are a little older and who have seen it all.