"Those of us who do have stories to tell"

Turning to the Editorials/Letters pages of yesterday's New York Times, I was happily astonished to find a letter from a Ph.D. student here at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's creative writing program, Kelly Grey Carlisle.  (It's hard to get a letter published in the Times, and you know this story must have generated lots.)

Kelly, the former managing editor of Prairie Schooner, served as the grad rep on the committee that interviewed me when I first visited UNL, and she's been lovely to know ever since.

After my own recent tome on the Seltzer topic, I enjoyed Kelly's brevity and clarity.  I'll quote her short letter in full:

To the Editor:

Re “Gang Memoir, Turning Page, Is Pure Fiction” (front page, March 4):

I was disappointed to read of Margaret Seltzer’s attempt to pass off gang members’ stories as her own in her memoir, “Love and Consequences.”

Her deception is not only a betrayal of her editor and publisher, it is also a betrayal of the community of readers and writers — a community that relies on trust to share truth and meaning.

By pretending to have led a life she has not, and by passing off that lie as memoir, Ms. Seltzer has betrayed those of us who do have stories to tell and who attempt to write them honestly and faithfully.

Finally, she has betrayed what every nonfiction writer should hold sacred — the stories of other people.

As a person of privilege, Ms. Seltzer has appropriated the experiences of those who live in violence and poverty. People who live in extreme uncertainty often have only one thing they can, with certainty, call their own: their stories.

Kelly Grey Carlisle
Lincoln, Neb., March 4, 2008

Beautiful.  I read Kelly's essay "Flotsam, Jetsam" in the Fall/Winter 2007 issue of Subtropics, and it was terrific.  She's working on a memoir now.