We’re so excited to welcome Jackie Domenus (she/they) to the PWN teaching roster this summer. Jackie is a queer, gender nonconforming writer from South Jersey, the author of No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, and the host of the Queer & Trans Nonfiction Podcast. We sat down with them to learn more about their teaching philosophy, their writing life, and what writers can expect from their six-week Memoir course starting July 14.
Tell us a little about yourself and how you came to writing.
JACKIE: I’ve loved creative writing since I was a kid! Throughout high school and college, I wrote cringey poetry, and eventually I started reading works of creative nonfiction like memoirs and essay collections, which blew open a whole new world for me. Books by writers like Roxane Gay, Megan Steilstra, and Melissa Febos really inspired me to start writing about my own life experiences, right around the same time I was grappling with my identity. I ended up pursuing a Master’s in Writing at Rowan University, started submitting and publishing creative nonfiction pieces in literary magazines and journals, and drafted the manuscript for my first book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays.
Your book, No Offense: A Memoir in Essays, was a Finalist for a Publishing Triangle Award and named a notable small press book of 2025 by Literary Hub—congratulations! What was it like to write a memoir in essays, and how did that form shape the stories you were telling?
JACKIE: Thank you! Writing a memoir in essays requires a lot of self-reflection, which is both rewarding and challenging. Ultimately, I knew I needed to write it in order to better understand myself and to highlight the impact that microaggressions can have on queer and trans people. In terms of form, I actually experienced the opposite–the stories shaped the form, rather than the form shaping the stories. Depending on what moment I was exploring from my childhood or what conversation I was recounting after “coming out” at nineteen, the stories determined whether the form called for a braided essay, a hermit crab essay in the shape of a quiz, or a cultural critique structure weaving the personal with films that were formative to my identity, to name a few examples.
You’ve taught memoir through Barrelhouse, Blue Stoop, Hippocamp, and the Rutgers Cooper Street Writing Workshops, among others. What do you love most about teaching this particular genre?
JACKIE: The genre of memoir often gets mistaken for something only famous people have the right to write, or people turn their nose up at it and call it self-indulgent or “navel gazing.” I love teaching memoir because I get to dispel all that. Everyone has life experiences worth writing about, or at least worth trying to write about as a means of sense-making or better understanding ourselves. Plus, the conventions of traditional memoir are fun to break and experiment with! Whether it’s point of view, form, or tense, I’m always excited to see what discoveries folks make with memoir in terms of both content and craft.
What do you think gets in the way of writers when they first sit down to write about their own lives?
JACKIE: One of the trickiest parts of first sitting down to write memoir is that it almost always involves real people from our real lives. Folks get worried about the backlash they might receive from the people they write about, which freezes the process out of fear. My advice to those folks is, first and foremost, that you don’t have to publish anything you don’t feel comfortable making public. You can write just for yourself, or for your writing group/class. And second, everyone has their own version or interpretation of events in their life. It’s ok if you write about a moment involving someone in your life, and they disagree with your recollection of it. Your story is yours to tell.
Your work has appeared in places like HuffPost, Autostraddle, The Normal School, and Foglifter Journal, and you’ve received two Pushcart nominations. What’s your own writing process like—how do you move from memory to finished essay?
JACKIE: I can usually tell I need to write about something when it’s taking up a lot of space in my mind, whether it’s a recent interaction I’m fixating on and getting angry about, or it’s a memory that pops up repeatedly when I can’t sleep at night. I am notoriously bad at free writing, so I usually start to plan an outline before I begin drafting. Maybe I’ll think about a piece of pop culture or a moment from adolescence related to this specific moment I’m ready to write about, and I’ll start to lay out how I might explore them together. Once I do start drafting, I always share with a writing friend or two to get feedback and revise. I can typically tell an essay is finished when it has helped me make sense of something in an articulate way that others can understand or relate to.
What can writers expect from your six-week memoir course at PWN this summer?
JACKIE: In the six-week memoir class, we’ll focus on short-form memoir, meaning one-off pieces, rather than an entire book-length project (though, perhaps this could be a step toward writing a whole book eventually!) We’ll read and discuss lots of pieces from great memoir writers, consider various forms and writing techniques, and get some drafting done via generative prompts. Each week will focus on a different main convention of memoir, from characterization to setting to point of view and beyond.
Who is this course for? If someone’s on the fence about signing up, what would you say to them?
JACKIE: This course is very literally for anyone! If you are someone who has written or even published a few memoir pieces, but you’re hoping to unlock some new ideas, this course is for you. If you’ve never written before and don’t even consider yourself “a writer,” but feel like you’ve got an important memory to share or experience to make meaning of, it’s for you. If you’re a poet or a fiction writer looking to dabble in some nonfiction, it’s for you too! Folks of all backgrounds and skill levels are welcome.
What are you reading right now that’s exciting you?
JACKIE: Ever since I started The Queer and Trans Nonfiction Podcast, I have been reading (and re-reading) so much more. Some recent favorites are Hijab Butch Blues by Lamya H. and Another Word for Love by Carvell Wallace. (Both are memoirs!) I also loved re-reading Sex with a Brain Injury, an absolutely genius memoir by D/Annie Liontas, and am very much looking forward to digging into Melissa Faliveno’s novel Hemlock.
Thank you, Jackie, for pulling back the curtain on your writing life and reminding us why memoir matters. We can’t wait to see what writers unlock in your classroom this summer.
Jackie’s six-week Memoir class runs Tuesdays, July 14–August 18, 7 to 9 p.m. ET / 4 to 6 p.m. PT, on Zoom. Register now at pwnwriters.org.
Welcome Jackie!!!