Brooklyn, N.Y., writer John Seabrook dove into his family’s past to better understand how they built a vegetable empire in southern New Jersey before the whole thing collapsed.
Atlanta writer Tom Junod wanted to understand how his charismatic father, a top manufacturer’s representative in the New York handbag industry after World War II, could be a bad guy and a good guy at the same time.
And Susan Orlean, whose immersive journalism brought to light fascinating stories of orchid obsession and a passion for public libraries, turned her focus inward in a 2025 book to better understand what drove her in a life of writing.
All three wrote lauded memoirs. All three are among the more than 80 world-class authors who will be in Charleston for the 10-day Charleston Literary Festival to celebrate the art of writing and storytelling.
“It’s amazing how little Americans know about their ancestors,” Seabrook said in an interview from his place in Vermont. “We move around so much, things get thrown away and once you get beyond living memory, everything is lost.
“But if somebody troubles to write it down, there’s a chance those memories will survive. My mother was that person. Also she was a great letter writer and saved carbons of the copies she made for her mother and sister. Those letters figure hugely in the book.”
Spinach made Seabrook stronger
Seabrook’s memoir, The Spinach King: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty (2025), delves into his family’s southern New Jersey farming empire of growing and packaging up to a third of the nation’s frozen vegetables from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. And then it imploded when he was a boy due to trauma and family dysfunction swirling around his grandfather, the scion.
Seabrook, a longtime writer for The New Yorker magazine, says he originally intended to write a family history. But he couldn’t remove himself from the story, so it became a “reported memoir in which I, the reporter, am present in the story from time to time and then for long stretches recede. It was tricky to get the balance right.”
At times, he struggled with some of the things his grandfather did and the myths that built up around him.
“To reveal some of those things like his racism and anti-Semitism look worse now than they did at the time … that was also difficult to reckon with. But there are other things he did mainly to my father that would be appalling in any era.
“A lot of idols had to be smashed in telling a truer version of the Seabrook story.”
He said he learned how the women in his family were its civilizing force “because the men were fundamentally amoral. Capitalism was their only guiding principle. I think there’s a line in Walden like ‘the wonder is I turned out so well.’ Given my dysfunctional family background, I feel the same way.”
Mad Men and more
Junod says his memoir, In the Days of My Youth I Was Told What It Means To Be a Man (2026), shares themes of the Mad-Men era with the memoir Seabrook produced.
“John and I have a lot to talk about,” said Junod, who lives in the Atlanta area and has a long writing resume that includes a stint of writing for Esquire magazine about the Mad Men television series that explored the mores of a changing America.
“John and I are about the same age,” he said. “We have dominant father figures. Both fathers were obsessed with appearances — obsessed with fine clothes and sort of living a different kind of life than most men.”
Junod didn’t say it like this, but the way he described his father sounded kind of like he was a charismatic cad.
“My dad sort of mostly made his mark through sex and John’s dad made his mark through the money and class. They were very similar sort of guys.”
They lived by their own rules, Junod said.
“What was interesting about them is they had rules. My dad’s rules were all about appearances — about how you dress, the kind of handshake you have. … Yet in his moral and ethical life, he basically had no rules at all.”
Junod, who struggled with how his father tried to shape his son into a similar mold, says his father’s post-World War II behavior came at a time when America was waking up to the sexual revolution.
“My dad was, I guess you could call him ahead of his time — but he was also very much of his time. … When I watched the first episode (of Mad Men), my jaw just hung open. I couldn’t believe it. I thought, how did they know?
“I didn’t know that he was (character) Don Draper or that Don Draper was him.”
Junod said that when he was growing up in the late 1960s on Long Island, he didn’t know any other fathers who were living like his philandering father.
“But at the same time, everybody knew what my father was up to. And sort of idolized him.”
The challenge for the memoir, Junod said, was to show that his father was more than a cheater with dark secrets, but a man who also had tremendous magnetism.
“He wasn’t just a bad guy. He was a charismatic bad guy who also in his way tried to be a good father. That was the biggest thing I had to do to get through the book.”
Writing a memoir — and Junod said it took a long time to work through it — was valuable because of how it connected his story to those of other people, like Seabrook.
“I go out and talk about my dad and there are always people waiting at the end of the signing line to tell me their story — that’s the great connection.”
Refocusing the lens
Orlean said a challenge of writing a memoir was turning the focus inward to a story she already knew.
“My other books have been about me asking a question and trying to learn about something and then essentially telling people what I’ve learned,” she said in an interview. “In the case of a memoir, it was obviously a different process — I already knew the story. The lens being pointed inward rather than outward.”
She said the platform of a memoir helped her to tell the story of her life experiences.
“Exploring your own life is completely different than going out into the world and trying to learn about something you know nothing about.”
She said anyone who looks back at their younger self learns.
“The mere process of deliberately putting together the story of your life, you see patterns. You have the great benefit of hindsight I think as time goes on. Looking back at your younger life is almost looking at something new.”
She said she was surprised to learn how she pressed forward at an early age.
“I think the thing that surprised me the most was my tenacity early on in my career when I had no real reason to be so tenacious and confident.”
She added that readers don’t have to be journalists to find meaning through her memoir.
“I think it’s a little bit about growing up and figuring out who you are and life has ups and downs and that’s the real texture of any life.”
Asked if there was anything she would do differently, she said it would be millions of little things. But then boiled it down to one, jokingly: Buy Apple stock early.
IF YOU WANT TO GO: Seabrook and Junod will appear 4 p.m. Nov. 4 to discuss their memoirs with Lucas Wittman, executive director of the 92nd Street Y Unterberg Poetry Center in New York City. Orlean will appear with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jayne Anne Phillips at noon Nov. 11 to discuss the art of memoirs with Charleston’s Anne Blessing, a board member of the festival. More: CharlestonLiteraryFestival.com
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