If you haven't done so already, check out Deborah's award-winning essay "Disappearing: A Recipe for Anorexia Nervosa" and then return here for a chat with the author.
WOW: Congratulations on placing in the Q3 2026 Essay Contest! How did you begin writing your essay and how did it and your writing processes evolve as you wrote?
Deborah: I’ve written a few pieces about my experience with an eating disorder in my mid-twenties. With this particular essay, I wanted to experiment with structure and try my hand at a hermit crab essay. Adopting the structure of a recipe to convey in the simplest terms how my anorexia had manifested offered room to express emotion without explanation. I also was aware of the irony of using a recipe for something that is so intimately—but not completely—related to food.
Once I landed on the recipe structure, the first draft came easily. The ingredients list changed very little as I revised. The instructions evolved and became more detailed as I remembered pieces of my life that related to each of the ingredients.
WOW: What did you learn about yourself or your writing by creating this essay?
Deborah: I learned that I could write outside the box and experiment with structure and form. Doing so frees up a part of my creative mind that allows me to go deeper into a topic without needing to overexplain for the reader.
WOW: Thank you for sharing your experience crafting your essay and experimenting with form and structure. I’ve always found it amazing that using a formal structure – like a hermit crab essay – can be so freeing! Could you please tell us more about the connection between story and healing – for yourself and/or others you’ve worked with?
Deborah: I write to better understand myself and the world around me. My debut memoir, Toward the Light: A Year in Paris, published on September 15, 2026. The process of writing the book, which recounts the first steps toward healing after a traumatic assault in Paris, has been a healing one. Putting the story on the page and examining it from a distance allowed me to make meaning of my experience. When I write about my past, as I did in the essay for this contest, I connect to my younger self with compassion, make sense of my life experiences, and come to know myself on a deeper level. Sharing my story offers an opportunity to connect and heal, for me and hopefully for readers.
Working with a coach during the process of writing my book inspired me to seek certification as a book coach in memoir. As a book coach, I offer steady support, honest feedback, and clear direction to women who are holding a story they’re not sure they can tell, so they can turn what their body carries into the memoir only they could write.
WOW: Congratulations on your book publication! And thank you for sharing how writing helps to heal what the body carries. Which creative nonfiction essays or writers have inspired you most, and in what ways did they inspire you?
Deborah: Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, Maggie Smith’s You Could Make this Place Beautiful, Carolyn Knapp’s Appetites, and Roxane Gay’s Hunger are memoirs I have returned to for their structure and their vulnerable writing that draws the reader into the story.
Chelsey Clammer’s essay collections and her classes through WOW! have inspired me to play and experiment with my own essay writing.
In a recent writing class, the instructor assigned Jo Ann Beard’s excellent essay, “The Fourth State of Matter,” which was published in The New Yorker in 1996. It is a master class on using a braided narrative structure.
WOW: That is a fabulous list of inspiring memoirists. If you could tell your younger self anything about writing, what would it be?
Deborah: Years ago, when I was in law school, I handed a paper to my advising professor after revising it and added a note to thank him for helping me shape it into a “publishable” piece. He returned the paper with red question marks beside my statement—clearly indicating his doubt in my work. Those question marks haunted me for a long time. I hesitated to call myself a writer.
I would tell my younger self these things: It’s never too late to start writing. At times it will be hard and you will want to quit. Keep going. Writing is a solitary endeavor, but we are not meant to do it alone. Find a community of writers to support you.
WOW: Thank you for sharing that excellent advice. Anything else you’d like to add?
Deborah: Thanks to the team at WOW! for all the work they put into their contests and the ways they support women writers. I especially appreciate the useful feedback I’ve received on the essays I’ve submitted over the last few years.
WOW: You are very welcome! And thank you for sharing your experience with WOW. Happy writing!
Interviewed by Anne Greenawalt, founder and editor-in-chief of Sport Stories Press, which publishes stories by, for, and about sportswomen and amateur athletes. Engage on social media @GreenMachine459.
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