How Darius Stewart sold his debut memoir

Keep those bits and pieces, people! Plus, announcing a new series

Darius Antwan Stewart and his debut memoir, Be Not Afraid of My Body.

Hi, friends. Welcome back to Poe Can Save Your Life. Last time out, I wrapped up my series on how to sell more books or [more units of whatever you’re selling]. If you missed it, click here.

Today’s post kicks off a new series in which I’ll be interviewing writers about their debuts, with a focus on:

• How they broke through.

• How they got agents and deals.

• What they learned along the way.

The idea is to extract lessons you and I might use. Obviously, every creator’s journey is going to be uniquely winding, frustrating, fruitful and farcical, and meanwhile it is true that very little advice can be universally applied. STILL, it’s a useful exercise to hear about artists’ lives and how they’re doing it, creatively, economically, craft-wise.

So, the interviews will dwell on those parts of the writers’ careers, and each one will highlight a specific lesson that you might consider taking onboard, such as:

Lesson #1: Keep those bits and pieces.

All those half-finished docs littering your desktop? Hang on to them. You just might find yourself using them one day to holy-shit-beautiful effect, so do not click and drag them all to the trash just because you’re not sure what the hell some of them are! Prose poems? Micro-essays? Shreds too deep for Twitter but too profound not to belong somewhere?

Yes. Those. Keep them. And maybe do so in a “spark file.” (See the link at the bottom of the email for a great article on this.)

Here to show you this lesson in action is Darius Antwan Stewart, author of Be Not Afraid of My Body, forthcoming from Belt Publishing in 2024.

Would you believe the book is the product of Darius’s own bits and pieces, finally pulled together to holy-shit-beautiful effect? Of course, that’s just one aspect of it, and just one aspect of his writerly story. Scroll on down for a fuller version.

But first, a little background: I met Darius all the way back in the summer of 2004 when we were both fellows at the Bucknell Seminar for Undergraduate Poets, along with 10 or so other college kids. Terrance Hayes was one of the visiting advisors; not too many years later, he won the National Book Award and a MacArthur Genius Grant. James Harms was the other advisor and I still remember him reading this poem aloud; it’s stayed with me my entire adult life, to the point that at least once a month I’ll be pushing a cart through the grocery store or standing in line at the P.O. and suddenly find myself mouthing the words: “Eternity is the hardest bargain.” Also, one of our peer-fellows went on to win the Yale Younger Poets Prize. Like Sylvia freakin’ Plath did.

Hahahaha, no, my overwhelming feeling at finding myself in this company was definitely not these people are legit and I am an idiot hack!!!!

The point is, it takes some doing to stand out in a crowd like that AND DARIUS STOOD OUT. If you value tonal complexity as much as I do, if you love lyricism coupled with clarity and authority, a sense of self and time and place, then he is your man. Some of this comes through in the interview—it could hardly fail to—but to get the full experience, I recommend his book. It comes out next February and preorders are up.

So, Darius, give us a quick bio?

I was born November 27, 1979, on a Tuesday morning, in Knoxville, TN, where I grew up with a younger brother and sister. I think my interest in writing started when one of my uncles sat me at his father's (my grandfather's) kitchen table and taught me how to write my name in cursive. I was about five years old then. I started scribbling my name every day after that, until those scribbles turned into more imaginative writing the older I got. I'm left-handed, so maybe it was fate that I grew up reading and writing all the time, though prose mostly. I didn't start seriously writing poetry until I was an undergraduate. I received an MFA in poetry before I returned to writing almost exclusively what I believe is my favorite genre, the essay. After about ten years serving and bartending, I received my MFA in nonfiction from the University of Iowa, which is where I wrote my first book of nonfiction, Be Not Afraid of My Body: A Lyrical Memoir.

I'm so glad you mentioned the book. It's amazing. Can you tell people a bit about what's in it and why you wrote it? 

Ahhh, the book! I wrote it during my time in the Nonfiction Writing Program at Iowa, and it became my MFA thesis. In 2015, I was diagnosed with congestive heart failure, which I learned was most likely brought on by years of alcoholism but certainly not helped by intermittent drug use. At the same time I was diagnosed with HIV. I wanted to write about the underlying causes that led to my addictions, which eventually resulted in those diagnoses. So I'd say that trying to understand how or why I became this person who misused alcohol and drugs is the reason I felt compelled to write the book. Of course, folx should know that you commissioned an essay from me in 2016 that really was the first time I'd written about such a traumatic event. I don't know if the book could've been written if not for that push. So thank you!

All I can take credit for is my good taste! What’s it like to get an acceptance letter from Iowa? More importantly, what was it like emotionally, intellectually, craft-wise, to write a book this profound and personal?

Well, I can't express how much I appreciate your support over all these years. I have to say that I experienced a real “awakening” of sorts after 2015 and I thought long and hard about how I was going to move on not only from the physical trauma, but I'd gotten my heart broken in the thick of it, and so I was totally reeling emotionally. My boyfriend at the time broke up with me for someone(s) else... it was effed up, to say the least. But I got through it and just concentrated on myself, which is why halfway through 2016 I decided the best thing for me was a career change. I was tired of bartending. I applied to the University of Tennessee's MSW program to become a drug and alcohol use counselor, but I also applied to a few writing programs, including Iowa. I wasn't so sure I wanted to go back to get another MFA, so I kept starting and re-starting the process... lol. Obviously, I completed the application and sometime around spring break of 2017 I was heading home on the trolley after doing some grocery shopping and I got a call from an 319 area code (Iowa) and I knew then that I'd gotten accepted... So, no letter, but a phone call from Bonnie Sunstein, who was the interim director of the NWP at the time, informing me of the good news! I was excited, for sure, to be admitted, but mostly I was relieved. When the dust settled, I felt as if this overwhelming weight had been lifted off me. I think it's because I felt I had a real shot at making a substantial change in my life. But more than that, I was ready to move on (physically) from my ex!

When I got to Iowa, I already had an idea about what I'd be writing about and how open I wanted to be about the events that make up the book. I'm sure you've noticed, but I've always had a penchant for the confessional. Essex Hemphill and Sharon Olds have for sure permitted me to be as vulnerable (and emotional) on the page as I wanted. And, of course, Whitman and Jack Gilbert's romanticism helped me find the right voice for this particular project. It took the three years of the program, and then some, to arrive at the structure the book would take. If I'd have been more emboldened, I might have dispensed with the “essay collection” feel the book currently has. I like how Margo Jefferson forgoes traditional “chapters” in her memoir Negroland. She uses white space and places sentences in bold font to signal shift in temporality and/or psychic space. It's rather fabulous how she does it. The effect feels at once so nebulous yet moored. I'm thinking of trying something similar with my next project.

I love all of that. Okay, let's talk book deal. What was it like for you, the process of getting an agent and getting a deal? What about the process surprised you?

Every time someone asks me about the process of getting an agent I feel so guilty because I did absolutely nothing to get one... lol. Though, to be fair to myself, what's remarkable about the whole process is how quickly I revised my 125-page thesis into a 200-page manuscript after having left it alone for so long. I was motivated to do so after one of my dear friends, a fellow MFA student, received a six-figure book deal for a novel I'd read parts of but didn't realize had been sent out on submission by an agent I didn't even know they had! I was so inspired by that—my friend's commitment to their craft—that a few days after they'd shared that news I jumped out of a dead sleep at 2:00 or 3:00 in the morning and just revised pages of material I'd written as long as ten or twelve years ago that I was so happy were relevant to the current project. It was the best lesson in preserving all the work you do that might seem like shit at the time but a decade or so later can be polished up and integrated in such a seamless way. I sent the revised manuscript to my thesis advisor, upon his encouragement, and he, without my knowledge, sent the manuscript, first to an editor, and when that didn't work out, to his agent. Luckily, his agent, now my agent, agreed to represent me and made me his top priority.

It's not too often—or so I've heard—that an agent will be so hands-on in preparing a manuscript to go out on submission, but mine was. And what I love about my agent is that he never once tried to make my nontraditional memoir a more commercially viable one. He believed in and appreciated my work and how it challenged those conventions. He also didn't shy away from submitting the manuscript to the commercial presses. Probably the most surprising aspect of the experience was that although every single editor from a major imprint declined to buy the book, they all had something wonderful to say about the writing, the message the book was sending, and were positive that it would find a good home somewhere else, but what they all implied in their polite refusals was that they didn't know how to market my book. Ironically, it was still the most affirming experiences I've had as a writer.

My book was probably on submission for about nine months with commercial presses when we decided to submit to the Indie presses. Of course, before we made the switch, my agent made it clear that I shouldn't expect an offer anywhere near that of the big houses, but being a poet, I've long been used to publication and a contributor copy or two being my only remuneration! But anyway, we proceeded with the Indies, and two months after we submitted, I received two offers. My agent was able to get one of the publishers to up their offer but the other wouldn't budge. It didn't really matter because my decision really came down to the editor who had the best vision for the further revisions I knew the book needed. (If this weren't a print interview, I'd go into more details about how long I had to wait to sign a contract due to the protracted negotiations, and how the developmental editing process was incredibly thorough and thoroughly onerous at times, and how editing and revising with an agent is soooo different from the same process with a publishing editor, but to do so would be exhausting!) 

If I could sum up the whole experience, to put it into perspective, so to speak, what we're talking about here—from getting an agent to procuring a book deal—took about fourteen months, which could only have happened after having a jolt of inspiration in the wee hours of the morning that resulted in a fourteen-hour revising marathon, no joke! I think about that any time I doubt how I'm going to get the next book written, let alone published... lol.

You bastard! What a great story. Do you have any other advice for aspiring writers? What’s your message for humanity? 

Writers can be the most self-deprecating beasts on the planet. Be kind to yourself. Be generous. Hopefully, humanity will follow suit. 

A Good Link

You can check out Darius’s writing on his website, here. Learn more about the book here.

For a fabulous piece on putting all your own bits and pieces into a “spark file,” check out this article by Steven Johnson:

In a funny way, it feels a bit like you are brainstorming with past versions of yourself. You see your past self groping for an idea that now seems completely obvious five years later. Or, even better, you're reminded of an idea that seems suddenly relevant to a new project you've just started thinking about.

Between talking to Darius and reading Johnson’s advice, I’ve finally settled in to keeping my own spark file. Here’s hoping my bits and pieces come together someday, and that yours do, too.

As always, thank you for reading. I’m wishing you the best with whatever creative project/long-shot dream you’re currently wrestling with, making endless notes toward, etc.,

Cat

P.S. Next time out, I’ll be speaking to Holly James, author of Nothing But the Truth and The Déjà Glitch. “Charming” doesn’t begin to cover it. Stay tuned.