I first met Marty Ross-Dolen in spring of 2020 at an online introductory event for Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) MFA in Writing program. We’d each been accepted into VCFA’s Creative Nonfiction program, with goals of working on our respective memoirs. During the COVID-19 pandemic, you got to know what those in your cohort were working on during online cohort meetups, through email exchanges if you made those connections, and especially if you were in workshop together (on Zoom). It was in workshop where my interest in Marty’s story really piqued. 

In 1946, Marty’s maternal great-grandparents, Garry Cleveland Myers Sr. and Caroline Clark Myers, started the popular children’s magazine, Highlights for Children. Her grandparents, Garry Cleveland Myers Jr. and Mary Martin Myers, joined the company four years later, and in December 1960, when they were traveling from Ohio to New York to find placement for the magazine on newsstands, they were tragically killed in an airline disaster involving two commercial jets over New York City. Marty’s mother, their second of five children, was only fourteen years old at the time. She married five years later, and one year after that, Marty was born. Marty’s memoir, Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for Truth, is the story of being raised by a young mother in protracted mourning. But it is also the story of how to put the pieces of a life together—that of her grandmother’s—in order to process the confounding grief that Marty feels about a woman she has never met. 

—Amy McIntyre

 

AM: Marty, congratulations again on the breathtaking book that sits next to me. Since we met at VCFA, tell us a little about the journey you went on with this story before you landed in the MFA program in 2020. 

MRD: Thank you so much, Amy! It’s a pleasure to be in conversation with you!

I would say the story of writing my book began a full decade before we met at VCFA. In December 2010, I traveled to Brooklyn to attend a fiftieth anniversary memorial event for the airplane accident that took my grandparents’ lives. I had not attended anything like this before, as there hadn’t been any kind of memorial up until that time, and although the tragedy had been ever present in my life, I had not intended to write about it. But this gathering at The Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn became an unexpected portal for me, an entryway into the telling of my story that hadn’t existed before. So that following summer, while visiting the Myers family homestead, I sat in the quiet of a cabin and began to write.

The result of that first writing effort was a long essay that I shared in a creative writing workshop at The Ohio State University. The essay told the story of the memorial as well as the story of the accident, including details I had learned only a few years earlier through my own online research. Despite knowing on some level that the essay was only offering a superficial brush of the story, my hope was that it was enough, that I had done what I needed to process the tragedy. Nevertheless, my workshop professor offered feedback to the contrary. He thought I needed to write a book. 

My reaction to my professor’s suggestion was to put all the copies of my essay filled with workshop feedback into a cabinet at home, where they stayed untouched for ten years. In the meantime, my mother, who was the archivist at Highlights, started cleaning out various attics and warehouses filled with company and family artifacts. Because I had long wanted to know more about my grandmother, whom I was named for, I asked my mother to save for me any personal letters written to or from my grandmother that she came across. Over time, I accumulated these and other materials in plastic bins in my basement. 

With the pile of essay copies in a cabinet and letters in my basement, I knew I had a big project ahead of me. The time to tackle it came during the pandemic, when I decided to enroll at VCFA. My hope was to combine the writing from the original essay with new writing based on whatever I would learn from my grandmother’s letters. The combination of working with brilliant faculty advisors and reading the work of numerous memoirists to establish my own writing aesthetic allowed me to write the book I was meant to write in the end.

 

AM: I’ve spoken to people who’ve been disappointed when family stories don’t include a single photo. You managed to include color copies of not only photographs, but letters, postcards, parts of a scrapbook detailing your grandparents’ love affair, and the cover of the very first Highlights issue from 1946. On a practical note, was it hard to convince a publisher to reproduce in color? And more importantly, you have taken a monumental project that involved hundreds of artifacts yet found a way to extract the most important of details. How did you choose? 

MRD: Because I used those artifacts that you list to propel the story forward, their inclusion was critical to the production of the book. And because I wanted the reader to have a close sense of what the artifacts looked like in real life, it was important to me to print them in color. For sure, finding the right publisher who was willing to work in partnership with me to create the book I imagined was a challenge. After an earnest and lengthy effort to find a literary agent and a traditional publisher without success, it became clear to me that my book would best be published in collaboration with a hybrid publisher where I could play an active role in the decision-making around the book’s design. Brooke Warner at She Writes Press was happy to work with me and accommodate all the unconventional elements of my book, and I’m thrilled with the end result.

Choosing which letters and photographs to include in the book from the thousands of pages of materials at my disposal was not an easy task. I decided to simultaneously write the manuscript while reading all my grandmother’s letters, and, as you can imagine, this was an overwhelming experience. Yet over time, while actively writing through that overwhelm, I was able to distill the themes of my book, and this offered clarity for me as I narrowed down the artifacts and decided which ones would most serve the story. I will say that there are so many letters I wish I could have included. But the truth is that even though a letter might have spoken to me personally, it often wouldn’t have been of interest to the reader and relevant to the book’s themes. Keeping those parameters in place allowed me to be more selective with the artifacts as I determined what to include.

 

AM: At VCFA, we learned about form and structure in memoir, and I took great interest in those that went beyond a chapter-by-chapter form. You not only incorporate short vignettes you call “wisps” as chapters in your book, but you also created erasure poetry from letters, and somehow a hermit crab essay landed in your book in the form of a game show script. Can you share with us how this variety of form came about?

MRD: Our interests are so alike in that way, Amy. I find the writer’s choice around form and structure to be fascinating too. It almost seems like the structure of a book could be its own character, that there is something the author is communicating through that particular choice. I had so many guides as I made my own decisions, brilliant writers who opened my eyes to the possibilities. I studied the fragmented memoirs of Nick Flynn, Sonja Livingston, Abigail Thomas, Carmen Maria Machado, Vivian Gornick, Harrison Candelaria Fletcher, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil, among others. I’m a fan of fewer writing constraints overall, so when I gave myself permission to play while writing my book, it freed me up so I could tell the story the way it needed to be told. 

Ultimately my choice to use a fragmented form emerged from the writing itself. Every time I would sit to write, fragments appeared. It was a rare day that I would take on a chapter that was more than a page or two. I found myself writing key words on pieces of paper that would refer to moments I wanted to include in the book, and I would find these notes in different places around my house—on my dining room table where I would read letters, on my office desk by my laptop, on the nightstand next to my bed. They would act as prompts for me and invited me to sit for sessions of finite writing, where I could tackle a single topic or memory with a beginning, middle, and end. As I think about it, I suspect this was the best, and perhaps, only way I was able to tackle that overwhelm that I described earlier, to chip away one bite at a time and leave each writing session with a feeling of completion and accomplishment.

You mention the erasure poetry and the game show script as well. This is where I really let myself play. The erasure poetry was like my own Highlights arts and crafts project, and a recurrent theme around magical thinking played out in this form as I wondered if there might be hidden messages for me in the letters which could be revealed through black marker redaction. The game show script evolved from a suggestion made by a faculty advisor who noticed that the section I was writing about my grandmother and three suitors felt especially boring in its current format and could be reimagined as a dating game. I love that you describe this television script as a hermit crab essay. I hadn’t thought of that before, but you’re so right, Amy. That’s exactly what it is.

 

AM: In a few of the short chapters, you also chose to enumerate facts for the reader. I appreciated this because your book contains a wealth of historical facts, and it helped me keep things straight. We don’t often see numerical lists in memoirs, but the organization did not seem to take away from the lushness of the story. Was the choice to enumerate strictly an organizational one? I can’t help myself—I’m forever intrigued by the form choices that authors make. 

MRD: Yes, but it was also for exactly what you describe, and I’m so glad to know you found this choice helpful. Inherent in the decision to write about three generations at once is the automatic risk that names, dates, and events will become confusing. Organizing the fourth part of the book using numbered lists felt like an efficient way to make sure the reader had all the detailed information necessary to keep up to speed with the storytelling. I think I felt compelled to itemize the facts this way because it was how I was keeping myself up to speed as well. There’s something about lists that I love—organization, yes, but also conciseness. A list implies limited language. I didn’t want the middle section of the book to get bogged down with pages of wordy factoids that weren’t necessarily connecting to one another or to the rest of the story. But I also knew that the reader’s knowledge of all those details was critical to their development of a deeper understanding of the characters and their lives.

 

AM: You bring the reader along with you when you interject yourself into your grandmother’s life, showing up next to her on the edge of her bunkbed, your feet dangling over the side alongside hers. Then in the rowboat on the lake. Your imagery and fantasy, blended together, are magical. Once you had the idea to insert yourself like that, did you waiver? Or did you immediately see the value that such heartfelt, poetic scenes would provide and know you had to stay the course?

MRD: Thank you so much for your kind words, Amy. I’m grateful to know you found those speculative scenes meaningful. In my entire book, those were my favorite sections to write. The truth is they were a total surprise to me, something that happened without any expectation. There were times when the sheer volume of letters felt so overwhelming that my writing process would become paralyzed, and occasionally I would choose a letter to transcribe at my computer just to feel like I was practicing the act of writing, tapping the keyboard and watching the word count grow. While transcribing the letter you mention, the one my grandmother wrote from her top bunk in her camp cabin, I suddenly started conversing with her on the page. Somehow these speculative scenes came easily to me, as I had been hearing her voice so acutely through her letters and knew it well enough to represent it in dialogue. 

What initially felt like a joyful novelty in my writing process turned out to be a critical element of my storytelling, as I realized I was developing a relationship with my grandmother through her letters and her voice. While at first I wasn’t sure these sections would end up in the final draft, it wasn’t long before I knew this writing was some of the most important writing I was doing. I was creating an experimental memoir, so bending the genre and including fictional scenes felt fitting for the book. Ultimately, rather than remove the speculative writing from the manuscript, I decided to create as many of these scenes as would serve the story. In the end, I can’t imagine my book without them.

 

AM: All memoirists must employ methods of reconstructing memory, which at times you do very matter-of-factly. For example, in one scene, you and your mother piece things together on a phone call, followed by a series of texts. Was your mother ever reluctant to help stitch these memories back together, given her earlier wish to not talk about them at all? And how does she feel now about your book? 

MRD: I find the process of memory recall to be fascinating, especially when writing memoir. There were times in my book when I didn’t want to just share memories in a vacuum; I wanted to take the reader along on my journey of remembering and the actual work it entailed. This was especially interesting to me when it involved not just me as the writer but my mother as well. To put a memory back together with the person who was present at the time doesn’t just allow the memory to resurface with fewer holes, but it allows for a new memory to be created: the memory of remembering together.

My mother has always supported my writing and encouraged me to tell my stories in whatever ways I have chosen to tell them. While I was writing my book, she was readily available to compare her memories to mine and help me reconstruct ones that weren’t so clear for either of us. And she was also open to talking and letting go of the silence that had surrounded her story throughout my childhood. We shed a lot of tears together while I was creating my book, but we knew there was no other way for us to get to the other side without going through the pain that surrounded the story. She loves my book and is especially proud to have her mother’s voice in the world again.

 

AM: Somehow, Marty, your story is also a mystery. You are reporter as well as detective. We sit on the edge of our seats with you, as you pour through bins, and search websites, libraries, eBay even. I don’t want to give too much away, but there’s a wonderful cadence of what you’re searching for alongside the story you’re telling. Were you aware that you were creating suspense? Did you use it as a tool? Or did it happen naturally?

MRD: I decided early in the process of writing my book that I wanted the reader to uncover the story in the same way that I did in real life. For this reason, it comes off as suspenseful, because I saved much of the story for the end. Another reason that I wanted the story to be told this way was that I felt strongly that the reader needed to know my grandparents as people who lived gloriously full lives. I had grown up knowing them to be people who suffered tragic deaths, and I didn’t want to think of them just in that way anymore. Focusing on their lives more than their deaths throughout the book was an important element to my own healing process through the writing. So I would say using suspense was what felt most natural for me to tell the story and turned out to be a useful tool to convey my experience.

 

AM: Finally, you describe being a child who is an emotional container for her mother’s grief. And physically, she is a container for your grief in scenes like the nightmare in your room where she holds you, assures you all is okay. Did your chosen profession of child psychiatrist inform much of your writing for this story? Or did you come at this project strictly from the position of daughter and granddaughter, perhaps experiencing a catharsis after spending so much time with the material, so much time with the memories you held. Is it possible for someone to write their way out of a story of this magnitude?

MRD: Being a child psychiatrist informs most everything I do. Even though I’m retired and no longer seeing patients, my training is ingrained. Yet much of my book depicts my character as a child and young adult, periods of my life long before I became a psychiatrist. So when I am writing from the perspective of the character in the scene, be it the daughter or granddaughter, I am bringing to the moment whoever I was at that time. Yet when I am writing from the perspective of the writer at the desk, reflecting on a particular scene, I’m sure the psychiatrist in me contributes to my understanding.

I love the idea that a writer can write their way out of a story. I will take this to mean that a writer can actively change how they think about their story or can reframe their story through writing about it, and in so doing, can heal from the process. And my true belief is that this can absolutely happen, because it happened to me. I see my whole story—both the ancestral pieces and the parts of my own life—in a completely different way now than I did before writing through it. I peered through lenses I didn’t have access to before, I looked at each element from every direction and angle, and I made sense of what happened to the characters in a way that I hadn’t considered in the past. This all led me to feel calmer and more complete. What had been missing wasn’t missing anymore. 

Telling my story through the writing of an experimental memoir was the greatest gift I could have given myself. I am different because of it. My greatest hope is that readers will access some of these same possibilities as they think about their own ancestral stories. Perhaps they will feel inspired to write about them in pursuit of their own growth and healing as well.

 

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MARTY ROSS-DOLEN is a graduate of Wellesley College and Albert Einstein College of Medicine and is a retired child and adolescent psychiatrist. She holds an MFA in Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Prior to her time at VCFA, she participated in graduate-level workshops at The Ohio State University. Her essays have appeared in North Dakota Quarterly, Redivider, Lilith, Willow Review, and the Brevity Blog, among others. Her essay entitled “Diphtheria” was named a notable essay in The Best American Essays series. Her memoir, Always There, Always Gone: A Daughter’s Search for Truth, was published with She Writes Press in May and is a finalist for the 2025 Foreword INDIES Book Award. She is a certified book coach in memoir and lives in Columbus, Ohio. Follow her on Instagram @martyrossdolen.

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AMY MCINTYRE holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She has recently been published by Past Ten, and before her time at VCFA, her human-interest stories were published online by Seven Mile Satellite. She runs a BIPOC library on Instagram, and is currently at work on a memoir about her experiences with childbirth and early motherhood. Follow her on Instagram @KsQreadsBIPOC.