Elissa Altman "Permission" 8/7/25 - 6pm - Ptown Bookstore

East End Books Ptown Presents: Elissa Altman "Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create"

*In addition to tickets to the book event, Elissa will be conducting a mini writing workshop with proceeds benefiting East End Literary Arts.

"On Permission: A Manifesto for Writers, Artists, and Dreamers is for anyone with a creative impulse, a resource to be reached for during times both fertile and not. The creative process often unfolds, albeit haphazardly, in a fairly predictable fashion: the impulse to create, the anxiety of starting, and-hopefully-the making of art. Along the way, a million different things can derail the process. Exploring subjects such as "The Myth of Perfection." "The Specter of Silence," and "Hubris and Humility," the goal of On Permission: A Manifesto for Writers, Artists, and Dreamers is to inspire and guide creatives to a place of transformation, of freedom from the constraints of shame and fear in all their forms, and to the understanding and recognition of the ethics of story-making, art-making, truth-telling, permission, and creative soul-saving. While especially good for writers, On Permission is also for creatives working in visual art, music, and beyond. Embedded within the essays are inspiring quotes from Annie Dillard, Zadie Smith, Jane Kenyon, Andrew Wyeth, Stanley Kunitz, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jericho Brown, Jacqueline Woodson, Wallace Stegner, Vivian Gornick, Ross Gay, Cheryl Strayed, Anne Lamott, George Saunders, Melissa Pritchard, Sally Mann, Dani Shapiro, Adrienne Rich, St. Augustine, and others"--

Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man's Feast, and the bestselling essay substack of the same name. A longtime editor, she has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut Book Award,Maine Literary Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and her work has appeared in publications including Orion, The Bitter Southerner, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, where her column, "Feeding My Mother," ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission, storytelling, and creativity, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers & Publishers, Kripalu, Truro Center for the Arts, Rutgers Community Writing Workshop, and beyond, and lives in Connecticut with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.

Review Quotes:

"Elissa Altman's marvelous, passionate and charming new book, Permission, is going to breathe freedom into your life. It is a clarion call for writers to tell their hard, lifelong truth, no matter how many decades they have agreed to stay silent. Lies and cover-ups won't save you. This book just might."

-- Anne Lamott, author of Somehow

"I can't think of a better book on the craft of memoir. Erudite, wise and deeply personal, Permission burrows into the complexity of telling our own stories. This is a masterclass."

-- Katherine May, author of Wintering

"Life-affirming and reflective, the writer's guide Permission explores concepts of creative validity and emergence."

Host or Publisher East End Books Ptown