by Pamme Boutselis
A Kentucky native, Bobi Conn grew up in an Appalachian holler, withstanding a tumultuous childhood while developing an innate love for words and the natural beauty of her surroundings. Both still run deep and she’s instilled each in her debut publication “In the Shadow of the Valley: A Memoir,” released in 2020. Conn’s “Someplace Like Home,” a novel about family and healing set in Appalachia, came out in 2024. The Penmen Review had a chance to ask Conn about her writing.
How did your latest book, “Someplace Like Home,” come about?
After my memoir, “In the Shadow of the Valley,” came out in 2020, I had a couple of conversations with my mother that really surprised me. We had talked a little in the past about how hard life had been with my father, but we never broached the subject of my mother’s role in that experience. I had unconsciously viewed her as both his victim and his accomplice—not because she abused us like he did, but because she had more power to choose to be part of that family than I did as a child, and she chose to stay in it for a long time.
I also knew her reasons for doing so were more complicated than a simple lack of will or strength. As we began to talk more openly about it, I realized my mother’s story could help me better understand not only our own lives, but the tragic pattern of women enduring abusive relationships, even with their children’s well-being at stake. My mother graciously agreed to tell me more of her story, which became the foundation for “Someplace Like Home.”
What was it like to fictionalize the personal stories you learned vs. sharing them in a nonfiction narrative?
Writing this story and fictionalizing certain aspects was an interesting challenge—and it was a new challenge that was really hard to navigate sometimes. On one hand, some amount of fictionalizing was very important to help me create a complete portrait of the characters involved. Since this wasn’t a psychological study of my mother, I used a fictional character (Jenny Caudill) to go beyond her memories of events and feelings from her younger life, to create a complex person with motivations, vulnerabilities, and complexity. Jenny isn’t a perfect representation of my actual mother, but she is a plausible character who I imagine could have been my mother, or similar to any number of young women growing up in rural America in the 1960s and 70s.
On the flip side, creating fictional elements to tell my mother’s story means that some of the story won’t ring true to the people who lived it. There’s a risk of feeling like the story therefore fails them—my mother in particular. I grappled with this concern while writing but ultimately believe if this book helps other people because it resonates with a larger audience, it has succeeded in the most important way possible.
Did you feel you grew as a writer in tackling this new form, and if so, how?
Yes, I do feel like I grew as a writer while tackling this new form. When we’re writing for ourselves, we can be self-indulgent and write what we want to write—sentences we love, story lines we want to read, and so on. But when we’re writing for others, we have to think carefully about what the story needs and how readers will experience the writing. There were a lot of aspects to the structure of this story that I had to think about and revisit, including the narrative points of view, which pushed my technical ability.
I also think that anytime we prioritize the story and the readers, the writer’s ego naturally must take a back seat, which helps me grow emotionally. That kind of growth is just as important to me as honing my skills, and the nature of my writing thus far has supported me growing as a person.
In writing this book, what did you learn along the way about your mom and, ultimately, yourself?
Something I knew intellectually but didn’t truly understand before writing this book is that my parents are individuals separate from their identities in relation to me. It’s natural to view our parents in relationship to ourselves, of course, but sometimes it’s really important to step away from that view. I believe now that in the most important ways, my mother never meant for me or my brother to suffer, and that has allowed me to not only let go of the past, but to have empathy for her.
I didn’t expect this, but I also feel a greater degree of compassion for my father after writing this book. I had already put a lot of effort into forgiving him, but writing his part in this story showed me that he was never capable of loving me the way a child needs to be loved. His emotional rejection and various abuses were never about me—they were about him, and he would have treated anyone like he treated us. Knowing it had nothing to do with me helped me let go of the last bit of childhood pain. Again, I already knew on an intellectual level that his behavior was always about him, but writing this story allowed me to feel that truth, which made it resonate.
The following interview was published in 2020.
Have you always written?
I have been writing since I was in middle school – before that, I was an avid reader. I think I was in sixth grade when a teacher assigned us to write a story in a couple of pages, but mine went far beyond that. I remember that I “borrowed” a detail from “The Odyssey,” and I labored over the characters’ names. My peers were not impressed, but my teacher said it was good, and that sparked a love of writing from then on.
You’ve written a memoir. How did you choose the way your story would unfold in your book?
My memoir is mostly written chronologically, but something that was very important for me in writing it was to reflect the oral storytelling style common in Appalachia. I didn’t start out understanding exactly why my story meandered like it did, but eventually realized that this is how I tell stories in conversation, and how I grew up hearing them. I had never thought about it, so I even checked with others from eastern Kentucky to confirm whether their experience of storytelling was the same. This approach means that sometimes, scenes within my memoir transition into other, seemingly unrelated scenes, before circling back and reconnecting to the initial story. I think of it as a type of weaving – the threads of various events, people, and emotions are woven together to create a tapestry that unfolds with the passing of time. I think this style is fitting for my memoir, particularly, as I’ve had to continually reassess my life experiences, integrating new experiences with my memories, to create meaning in my life.
What did you learn about yourself as a result of writing this book?
It is bittersweet, but one important thing I have learned through writing this book is that my understanding of what is “normal” really doesn’t correspond to most people’s understanding. When I set out to connect some of my childhood experiences to decisions and choices I made as a young adult, I thought I had outgrown all of the limitations of my young adult self. Now, I see that some of my thinking and perceptions are still shaped by my early life, and I realize I may not be able to “fix” all of those things. At the same time, I now have greater compassion for myself, and I can focus on understanding myself better rather than waiting for others to understand me.
What challenges do you face in your writing, and how do you overcome them?
I’ve been a single mom for most of my adult life, and taking care of my children has always come before my writing, which means I have to be disciplined when it comes to managing my time and seizing the opportunities I have to write. When my kids were younger, having them go to bed on a consistent schedule gave me a window of time to write before I went to bed – I’m a night owl, so getting up to write before they awoke was never on the table. I’ve taken vacation days from my full-time job so I could write while they were in school, and if I know I can have an hour or several hours alone, I start writing as soon as that time begins. I also need a lot of time to let ideas take root and grow in my mind, so I view all of my leisure time as time to let my subconscious work with the ideas that I’m hungry to put into words.
What was the road to publication like for you?
My memoir began as my creative writing thesis for my master’s degree. Shortly after I graduated in 2007, I sent out queries to various agents and one responded, but she explained to me that I needed to write at least another 40,000 words to have a suitable book length. Then, the stock market crashed in 2008 and the agency said they couldn’t take on another memoir in that climate. Over the next seven years, I occasionally sent out a flurry of queries, all of which were rejected or ignored.
In 2015, I saw an advertisement for a conference in the nearest city to me, and I saw that attendees could pay extra for a 15-minute meeting with one of two agents during the conference. I promptly signed up, chose the agent I wanted to meet with, and thankfully, she invited me to send my first fifty pages after we met. My memoir required more work before the agency signed me on, and the proposal process was then somewhat complex, but it all served to improve my book. I hope that now I could write a compelling query, but that face-to-face meeting was necessary for me at the time to overcome the first major hurdle to publishing.
How do you market your work?
Self-promotion is definitely not my forte. Thank goodness, my publisher has a great team that has put forth most of the effort in marketing my memoir. And of course, my agent marketed it before that. I am someone who needs support from others who are good in those roles. I think that’s part of why all of my query letters and emails were rejected – I’m not great at marketing. I am engaging in social media more so than I have in a long time, but my hope is that if I put out good work, it will largely speak for itself, especially with the support and wisdom of publishing experts.
What do you wish you knew when you first started writing that you know now?
That having a good editor is invaluable. I think most of us writers (and artists in general) probably have some protective pride about our work and don’t want others to try to improve it. I had to learn to trust my editor and when I did that, I saw how valuable her insights were. I’m used to questioning everything and defending myself, but when it came to working with her, I realized that my editor was also highly invested in the quality of my work. After I let my guard down, I started seeing how insightful some of her comments were – even if I thought a passage worked really well, she offered the perspective of both a reader and an expert in her field, and that led me to write things that were more clear, more thoughtful, or both.
What role did your education play in your development as a writer?
From the time I wrote my first (memorable) story in sixth grade until graduate school, my education has offered me places to think about, and sometimes talk about, the choices writers make, why they make them, and the effects of those choices. I am also grateful that I learned to read and was able to read so much as a young child – as an avid reader, I believe I picked up a lot of grammar and stylistic nuances that helped inform my writing style. In grade school, going to school was often a respite from the violence and confusion in our home, and in middle school, I discovered that writing my own stories allowed me to create worlds of my own, adding to the books I read to escape my misery. In my development as a writer, education, therefore, gave me the necessary tool of literacy, which we take for granted but should not, as well as an environment in which I could think about and talk about writing, which otherwise would not have been accessible to me.
Who are the authors that have inspired you most, and how have they inspired you?
When I read “Angela’s Ashes,” by Frank McCourt, I realized that a horrific experience can be told so beautifully, it renders a story that the reader does not want to leave. To me, that is the greatest accomplishment – to turn the ugly and painful into a work of art. I first read “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” by Gabriel García Márquez, when I was 16-years-old. I fell in love with magical realism then, which felt familiar to my own life, shaped in esoteric ways by the spiritual and natural forces that I found so freeing. I read “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy when I was 18, which was my first real introduction into fantasy, and I really love the way Tolkien creates a world that is so fully believable. That’s a crucial aspect of storytelling, to create a fully believable world for your readers, and I am fascinated by not only stories but the ways in which they are crafted.
If you could keep just three books in your library, which would you choose and why?
- “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” because I am confident that there are numerous details in that book that I have missed when reading it several times thus far, and I suspect I would have to read it many times to fully grasp all of its complexities.
- A large book of poems by Rūmī, the Sufi poet. In times when I needed spiritual inspiration, his work has spoken to me.
- “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. Studying this book and thinking about the multiple possible worlds that she created, as well as the real-life story that inspired her book, represents some of the best achievements a writer can accomplish. Also, I don’t think another book has ever made me feel such a deep and lasting sorrow, and I always want to be able to access that depth of emotion.
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