Words From the Authors: Trio House Press’s Fall Release Line Up
Hear from Samina Najmi, Elline Lipkin, and Renee Gilmore on their upcoming October releases
We are less than a month away from the release of Sing Me a Circle by Samina Najmi, Girl in a Forest by Elline Lipkin, and Wayfinding by Renee Gilmore. These talented authors have shared answers to two questions that give an inside look at their books releasing on October 1st. You can pre-order all three of these titles online at Trio House Press’s Shopify.
Sing Me a Circle by Samina Najmi
Samina Najmi is Professor of English at California State University, Fresno. A scholar of race, gender, and war, she began writing memoir and personal essays in 2011. Her creative nonfiction has appeared in over thirty literary journals, including World Literature Today. Najmi's memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the 2024 Aurora Polaris Award in creative nonfiction and will be published by Trio House Press on Oct 1, 2025. Publishers Weekly gives the book a starred review, and Poets & Writers features it among its top five creative nonfiction debuts of the year. Daughter of multigenerational displacements, Najmi has lived in California's Central Valley since 2006 and watched with wonder her children, her students, and her citrus grow. Come visit her at saminanajmi.com.
What did writing this book teach you about yourself that you weren't expecting to learn?
I wrote the essays over a period of ten years, so a lot of living and growing happened for me in that time. In some ways, we are always discovering who we are. When I first began writing personal essays, I was surprised that if something was weighing heavy on my mind, all I had to do was face it on the page and chances were I'd see my way through the moment. All my life, I saw my mother do that: write her "diary" in order to do her own "sorting out," as she put it. So, really, the surprise was that I had forgotten I'd always had that example before me. And then the surprises built on one another: that my lived experiences could create beauty in the telling; that others could enter into my life-on-the-page and find themselves there. That sense of connection with other human beings through my writing has been a great joy and comfort I've discovered in the course of writing this book.
Toni Morrison said, "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." What do you think this book says or does that you haven't read in other books?
I wouldn't want to make a bold Star Trek-like claim about my writing, but I will say that personal essay collections, or memoirs-in-essays by BIPOC women, are hard to come by. This is especially the case for South Asian American women writers whose lives straddle multiple continents and whose family histories go beyond national narratives that are inevitably limited. We have much to learn from their global perspectives and hard-won wisdoms about belonging. There's the potential for discovering our surprising interconnections without losing sight of our specificities. I hope my book offers readers of all backgrounds a more expansive sense of self, one essay at a time.
Girl in a Forest by Elline Lipkin
Elline Lipkin is a poet, nonfiction writer, and academic. She holds an MFA and PhD in Creative Writing and Literature and has been a Postdoctoral Scholar at UC Berkeley and a Research Scholar with UCLA’s Center for the Study of Women. Her first book, The Errant Thread, was chosen by Eavan Boland for the Kore Press First Book Award. Part of the Seal Studies series, her second book, Girls' Studies, explores contemporary girlhood. She has been in residence at Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, and was a California Resident at Yefe Nof. She has served on the selection committee for the Kingsley & Kate Tufts Poetry Awards. A past mentor with AWP’s Writer to Writer program, she is active with WriteGirl in Los Angeles and writes for Ms. magazine. For two years, she served her community as Poet Laureate of Altadena.
What did writing this book teach you about yourself that you weren't expecting to learn?
That my imagination unleashed in new ways when I was working with a set piece -- the forest, the witch's house, the trail of crumbs. Having these 'anchors' in place, alongside characters who are already familiar touchstones, allowed my writing to move into a new register and go places that I never expected. It corresponds to the common wisdom that working in form allows freedom within restraints. I wasn't working with poetic forms in this manuscript, but a particular narrative framework, and it led me to take unexpected leaps.
Toni Morrison said, "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." What do you think this book says or does that you haven't read in other books?
When I started to imagine the inner lives of the figures in this Grimm fairy tale and to write persona poems from their point of view, I almost felt embarrassed. I thought using these well-known figures was an almost trite literary trope. But it quickly became one of those situations where the more I looked, the more I found. There have been screenplays, films, TV series, music, all based on Hansel and Gretel. Just this summer, I went to a dance performance called "Sugar Houses" based on this story. I suddenly saw these characters as touchstones who remain important because they serve as archetypes. That's when I felt I had permission to view them as a palimpsest through which I could inscribe my own version of this tale. I see these characters through the lens of shifting family dynamics, the roles that girls and women move through within their lives, and how a family reconstitutes after extreme grief.
Wayfinding by Renee Gilmore
Renee Gilmore is the author of Wayfinding: A Memoir (Trio House Press). A multi-genre writer, essayist, and poet, she writes about her experiences growing up in a family of car enthusiasts—mechanics, racers, and collectors—and navigating a family full of secrets. She fearlessly explores the illusion of happiness and the power of resiliency. Gilmore is neurodivergent and a first-generation college graduate, holding a bachelor’s degree from the University of New Mexico and a master’s degree from Hamline University. Her writing has appeared in numerous literary journals, including The Louisville Review, Fatal Flaw, and Pink Panther Magazine, among others. She lives in suburban Minneapolis with her husband, Steven, and works in corporate learning and development.
What did writing this book teach you about yourself that you weren't expecting to learn?
There were many surprises along the way. One of the main things this book illustrated for me was the raw power of survivorship and the deep mysteries of resilience. I now think of resilience and survivorship as the belt and suspenders of moving through trauma. You may be able to make it with one, but your strength will be truly forged by having and leveraging both.
Until I delved deeply into writing this book, I never actually considered myself resilient. And not necessarily even as a survivor. I grew up in a family of tough, determined people. I was told to “toughen up” and “I’ll give you something to cry about.” My father had a pronounced limp and chronic pain from a horrific childhood car accident…my grandmother left home at 16 because there was not enough food for her and her brothers, and she lived in a boarding house and worked as a waitress while she went to night school. I was indoctrinated into this type of bootstrap thinking. When asked about how I survived, I always thought, Well, I just did what anyone would have done. I didn’t realize there were other options… until I had to do something drastic to save myself: fight back, run away, or, as a last resort, attempt to take myself out of this world. I was always afraid of being called weak, even though I know now that saving yourself is an incredibly powerful statement of strength.
During the writing of the book, I was forced to reflect on the experiences that I documented. When I think about the abuse, the violence, even the kidnapping I chronicled, I think, Wow! How DID I survive all that? And how can I take the answer to that question and potentially help someone else who is stuck in what I call the messy middle?
Toni Morrison said, "If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it." What do you think this book says or does that you haven't read in other books?
I’ve thought about this quite often. While living through the experiences I describe in the book, I felt profoundly alone—isolated, frightened, and deeply sad. From a young age, I searched for guidance: a roadmap, a mentor, someone or something that could help me make sense of myself and help contextualize my life. On the surface, especially as I got older, I masked my true feelings pretty well, as I carefully observed other people and tried to learn how to fit in. Yet I never felt quite normal – I always knew I was a little different, maybe a little weird, too. I found myself being wary when I should have been open, and pretty reckless when I should have been careful. I just never knew where the guardrails were.
In the 1980s and early 1990s, there were no search engines, no online communities, and few books that could reach the shadows where I was trying to survive. What I longed for was a story from someone like me—not an expert, but an ordinary person willing to fearlessly share their truth about living through experiences that mirrored mine. I wanted to know: How did they survive the darkness? How did they find their way out of the messy middle? Most of all, I wanted to know that it was possible: that I could make it through, and that one day, I could be whole and okay. If Wayfinding: A Memoir can reach and help just one person who is suffering and show them that it is possible to remap and reclaim their life and find joy, then everything I poured into it will be worth it.
