My guest on BookNotes this month is memoirist, novelist, ands Baltimore Banner award-winning columnist Leslie Gray Streeter, whose new novel Beignets and Big Feelings is being released on October 13.
Judith: My guest on BookNotes this month is journalist, memoirist, and author Leslie Gray Streeter. It's such a pleasure to welcome you to BookNotes, Leslie. Thank you for making time for us today.
Leslie Gray Streeter: Thank you for having me. This is exciting.
Judith: So of course, we know you from your byline at The Baltimore Banner, a very moving memoir from you, Black Widow, and also your first novel, Family and Other Calamities. I want to talk to you a little bit about craft. So I think we get a good sense of you from your columns, but nevertheless, there is a different approach if you are writing as a journalist versus writing long form. Tell me about that split personality in your case.
Leslie Gray Streeter: It really feels that way. When I wrote my memoir, it felt like 1,000 columns. 'Cause I'd never written anything that long before. Because I'm a columnist, I'd written about, you know, my own opinions. I'd been a reviewer. I'd written, you know, more personal things. I'd written just kind of topical, pop cultural things. Writing in first person was not difficult, but going, "I have to sustain this for a couple hundred pages, and I have to talk about really difficult things," it was a good baptism for not only writing to that length, but writing with a narrative, whether it's fiction or nonfiction, that carries through and is consistent. It was a really good writing test, I think, for me, being able to do that, and then going to the Banner and becoming a columnist again. It's all been a really good learning experience, and it's fun to learn something at 55, right? It's, it's fun to know that you're, um, that you have skills that are not stagnant, and it's been a really great education for someone who graduated from journalism school in the '90s.
Judith: Tell me about the premise of your novel coming out this month, Beignets and Big Feelings.
Leslie Gray Streeter: Thank you. It is about a family of women from Baltimore, ages about 16 to 70-something, who are instructed by their late matriarch's will to go down to New Orleans to do what essentially is a scavenger hunt. They're like, there's a person in one of their lives who they hadn't heard from in ages. The matriarch was like, "I want you to find out what happened to this old boyfriend of yours." And she's, like, the snooty younger sister of the grandmother who moved off to Oregon and never came back, 'cause she thought she was too good for it. So all these people who don't know each other very well, and one or two who have kind of grudges against each other, are forced to go on this trip, or no one gets anything from the will. And so that's the impetus.
I happen to love New Orleans. I find it like Baltimore with a different accent. It's beautifully, proudly historic. There's a rough and tumble to it. There's a mysteriousness to it. It's a very Black city, and then other accents, you know, being New Orleans. Every time I've gone, I've been four times in the last 20 years, including twice last year, every trip is different. 'Cause I am different every time I go, and I'm looking for different things every time I go, and it just seemed like a really great place for a family that's both discovering a new place and discovering each other.
Judith: Lovely to write about place in this way. This is a new novel that is coming out from Leslie Gray Streeter, whom we know from her byline at The Baltimore Banner. This is her second novel, following on from her memoir, Black Widow. The novel is Beignets and Big Feelings, coming out this month. There's more information on Leslie's website, which is lesliegraystreeter.com. Congratulations. So lovely to talk to you.
Leslie Gray Streeter: Thank you!
