Karleigh Frisbie Brogan: On the Steel Trap of Memory, Scattering the Self, Coming Clean, and Her Debut ‘Holding: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts’

I first read Karleigh’s work when I was preparing to attend an esteemed writer’s conference back in 2021. I was reading essays for our workshop and hers was randomly the first in the batch. The essay I had submitted to the group was one about addiction and pigeons and New York and Florida and being stuck and my own psychology—it needed a lot of work. The essay I read of Karleigh’s was about waiting in a McDonald’s parking lot for drugs, about dopesickness, “a scattering of my parts,” asking questions about the fabric of reality and our own supplication to forces beyond our control. 

Imagine reading these lines in a fellow participant’s work: 

Sebastopol was the tender green middle between parched yellow plains and hills to

the east and the blue ocean to the west. It had its own cycles, its own fragrance. During the

day, the sun coaxed the sweetness of Gravenstein orchards and dried grasses. In the

evening, fog permeated every leaf and blade, creating a sharp, daily petrichor that mingled

with the piney whiffs of fireplace, the oily coats of sheep and horse, the rich soil underfoot.

I didn’t stay at the conference due to personal issues, but Karleigh did. And I worried she might judge me for leaving, but she didn’t. Instead, we Zoomed a few weeks later, gossiped, commiserated, and virtually hugged each other, as was much needed, for me at least.

I remain in awe of her and her work and I am forever grateful to have forged a friendship rooted in deep acceptance and understanding. Karleigh’s writing has taught me that it’s not about bleeding your heart out on the page, but rather it’s about holding up an honest mirror to ourselves—reaching into the shadows of who we are to tell the truth, no matter how dark or uncomfortable it may be. Her writing is unshakeable, frank, and brave. Her debut memoir is a beauty to behold.

Karleigh Brogan’s Holding (Steerforth, 2025) is a searing debut that traces the wreckage of addiction and the unexpected kinships that tether her to life. Through fractured memory, Brogan claws her way back toward the aching possibility of return.

Brittany Ackerman: Congrats on this absolutely stunning book! I know we often joke about how it never feels like enough, how even though we are so grateful for this published life, it still feels like a warped version of what we imagined it would feel like, lol.

That being said, I hope you have been able to celebrate this dream, this major accomplishment in your writing life. Can you talk about the best moments so far, the most rewarding? Play us a highlight reel!

Karleigh Frisbie Brogan: It’s funny how it never feels like you’re there yet. I remember telling my husband years ago that if I got an agent, we’d go up to The Observatory, this little restaurant we always eat at, and I’d get a slice of carrot cake—they have the best carrot cake—and one glass of chardonnay, which tastes like home to me. Well, we didn’t do it. I postponed it to when and if the book sold. And now that it’s sold, I’m telling myself I’ll eat the cake on pub day. That I’ll invite some friends and we’ll all go out. We’ll see if that actually happens. It’s like I’m holding out for the ultimate, utmost accomplishment, whatever that may be. For it to feel done, somehow. But it’s never done. 

Being recognized as an Oregon Literary Fellow was huge. I remember when I found out. I was at work and felt an email come in. And the thing is, emails come in all day and make their little vibration against my butt cheek and I usually ignore them. But this time, for some reason, I looked. It was like I was having a weird, psychic moment. I was so ecstatic I had to run off the energy. I went outside and did a lap around the block. More recently my book was selected as a Zibby Summer Reads pick. I flew out to New York for the party and it was totally surreal being in this Park Avenue penthouse with all these distinguished writers, eating fruit kabobs.

BA: In your Author’s Note, you say, “Though my memory is vivid and extensive (a friend calls me the steel trap), there is no way I have it all right. Memories are formed in the matrix of our own emotions and opinions—they are subjective and fallible, slightly reconstructed with every recollection.”

How does the steel trap operate? What do you think it’s looking for or holding onto? And what happens when you brush up against the faults of memory in your work? 

KFB: There’s a bit of counterintuition with memory. Mine, at least. It’s like, the more temporal distance I have from my memories, the more substantial they become. Each time I recall something, it fleshes out. Other details are remembered and added in. This is sort of a curse. Because the memories on which I tend to ruminate are usually the most painful ones. So after over twenty years, these often disturbing memories have become thick and vivid and haunting. They haven’t faded at all. It does indeed feel like I’m searching for something when I replay it all in my head ad nauseum. A clue I hadn’t noticed before. It’s like I’m a detective poring over a crime scene over and over again. I’m trying to exonerate myself, maybe. Not from the acts that I did but for the reasons I did them. I’m trying to find something to make sense of it all.

Ethically, we have to record our recollections as accurately as possible. Particularly if the detail is weighty and of import and consequence. I mean, if I remember curtains as blue when they were actually red, no harm no foul. Maybe my memory of them being blue says something about myself, something more telling and revelatory than the fact of their redness. I actually have an example of this in my book. I refer to one of my mom’s boyfriends as “the butcher.” Later, when I was talking to my mom, she said he wasn’t a butcher at all but a manager. Maybe of the meat department (he worked in a grocery store), maybe of the whole store, who knows. But he had cattle he slaughtered. Was raised by chicken ranchers. Had a meaty face. As children, my siblings and I called him a butcher and I guess it stuck. I mean, truth be told, he did manage to butcher our family, for better or for worse. Anyway, the butcher stayed. For all of those reasons. I wasn’t going to refer to him as “the manager.” That would have been less correct.

BA: There is an extremely emotional and ethical complexity to writing nonfiction. As a creative nonfiction teacher for over a decade now, my most asked question I get about writing a personal essay/memoir is some variation of “How do I know if it’s my story to tell?”

Some writers clear their work with loved ones before it goes public. Others think it’s easier to ask for forgiveness rather than permission (raises hand). In your opinion, how does one tell the truth if it involves someone else? 

KFB: I’ll start with the first question: how do I know if it’s my story to tell? Which seems to be an evergreen question for writers of nonfiction. And a good one. I thought about this a lot, especially with regard to the character of Glorianne. The fact of her adoptee status, the attendant mother hunger as she searched for her biological mother, was it my place to say this? There was a lot of projection there. Possible conjecture, even. I knew my own wound and recognized she had it too. Perhaps it was she who had made me aware of mine in the first place. Her story, this snapshot of a few years in which we lived together, informed my story. It’s inextricable. I couldn’t fully tell my own story without telling a part of hers. Which gets to the last question. I can only tell my truth as I see it. I saw Glorianne as xyz. Maybe she doesn’t see herself that way. Maybe she disagrees with my assessment of her. Maybe she’s more correct than I am in her assessment of herself. Or maybe she’s flawed. Unreliable. Which is also correct. The same way I might be flawed the way I see myself. This is such a huge philosophical question!

As far as forgiveness vs. permission, I do a little of both. Mostly I ask for forgiveness afterwards. But I also interviewed my subjects, and in doing so, there was an implicit appeal for permission. I have found that asking permission first not only hinders my flow but limits the unexpected material, the connections and revelations that pop up when I’m writing without a predetermined set of instructions.

BA: Your book reminds me of a film, Heaven Knows What, a 2014 drama film directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, based on the real-life experiences of Arielle Holmes, who also stars in the film. The story follows a young homeless heroin addict named Harley (played by Holmes) as she navigates the harsh realities of life on the streets of New York City, entangled in a chaotic and abusive relationship.

If you haven’t seen it, you must, but beware, as it may be super heavy to watch. Anyway, there’s a standout scene in the movie where Harley gets on the back of a motorcycle with a stranger who takes her on a wild ride through New York City. She is clearly high, dazed, and emotionally volatile. Here is this young woman drifting through addiction and heartbreak, grasping at fleeting moments of intensity to fill a void—such a powerful metaphor for Harley’s inner chaos.

I don’t AT ALL feel like the movie glorifies drug use. If anything, the film scared me shitless. But I do wonder how you feel about certain media and the portrayal of drug use and/or addiction. What’s your hot take?

KFB: I have to watch that! 

I certainly think that the ’90s glamorized drug use. Movies like Trainspotting, Another Day in Paradise, etc. made me want to use more, even if the takeaway was that drugs were bad. I mean, you got these hot actors and awesome soundtracks. It was hard not to think it was all so cool. I feel like I don’t see as much of that anymore. Maybe because the drug epidemic has gotten so much worse it’s impossible to make it look sexy. I mean, watching Kendall Roy’s character get fucked up in Succession never looked edgy or sexy to me. And I can’t imagine it did to anyone! He looked sad and pathetic. Maybe filmmakers and directors are just more conscientious these days. They know it would be highly irresponsible to glorify drug use. And maybe we’re just smarter now, too. I love that everywhere I go now there’s a plethora of NA beers, of innovative mocktails. You don’t have to get loaded to be hip. I mean, I could be totally wrong. There could be an entire underbelly of young people that are into drug culture and I’m just completely unaware of it. 

BA: In “Celestial Bodies,” which I believe was the essay I read an earlier version of years ago, you write, “Dopesickness felt like a scattering of my parts—so riddled with something so much worse than pain I had to ditch them and keep walking without legs, breathing without lungs. ‘Me’ became a burning point outside of, or perhaps deeply inside of, myself.”

I love the way you articulate this scattering of parts, and I wonder if you might talk about writing as a sort of scattering of the self, i.e. the many versions of you that must exist in order to tell a story. Or do you have one true version you’re always aiming for or aligning with? To thine own self be true, I know, I know, but sometimes it’s more complicated than that! Right?

KFB: We contain multitudes, right? I think I finally, truly understand that in a lived-in way. Forever I thought a person fell into a sort of template, and these templates would dictate who they were, what their interests and values were, and every decision a person made had to be in service to the template. Punk rock starter pack, you know? Hippie artist, what have you. And obviously the aesthetic accoutrements were less germane than, say, belief systems. And I do think, hope, we have our innate and immutable belief systems but sometimes they don’t fit exactly into the template. We contradict ourselves. The older I get the more I let go of the idea of a self. I meditate, and that helps. In fact, meditation is not unlike what I was doing on those long, ambling walks, dopesick and waiting for my connection. I had to dissolve the borders between myself and everything. To realize I was everything! And yeah, if all that everything couldn’t coexist with itself, I wouldn’t have the openness and curiosity to get at a truth in my writing. 

BA: I’m going to ask you about your day job. It’s in your bio! But also, you and I have talked about what we do to pay the bills. I’m recently in the health and wellness world as a yoga instructor, as I wanted a job that didn’t involve writing (although now I write posture sequences on little pieces of paper). And you work as a grocer at a nationwide-known establishment. 

What has working at a grocery store taught you about yourself? About writing? And are there any writing skills that creep their way into how you interact and engage with people IRL?

KFB: Take me through a vinyasa! 

I actually have a piece coming out at LitHub about this soon. But, briefly, I love working at a grocery store precisely because it’s not writing. If I were a painter of fine art, I wouldn’t want to paint houses, or signs, for a living. Maybe that’s a clumsy metaphor, but I think it works. As a writer, I want to conserve all the energy it takes to create. I want to hoard it all to myself. That is, right now I do anyway. That could change. My job is so embodied. It’s extremely physical. It utilizes an entirely different muscle, or muscles, than writing does. So no matter how tired my back is from breaking pallets of beans, I still have the brain-space, the emotional capacity to write. 

At my job, I’m forced to interact with hundreds of people each day—customers, yes, but more importantly my co-workers. And just being out in the field like that, being hands-on with an array of individuals from all sorts of backgrounds is the best legwork for my writing. How else can you really know the complexities of being human? 

When I tell people I meet in the writing world that I work at a grocery store, they often seem surprised. I have to admit it makes me feel uncomfortable and less-than and othered. And when I tell my grocery store co-workers that I’m a writer they’re just as surprised. They ask “Why you still working here?” Maybe in the collective imagination these things are irreconcilable. But in reality they work quite well together! And I have access to cult-status food items (and tote bags) before they sell out!

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Karleigh Frisbie Brogan is a writer from Santa Rosa, California. She was a 2024 Oregon Literary Fellow and the recipient of the 2023 George Pascoe Miller Scholarship for the Community of Writers Summer Workshop, a 2022 Rona Jaffe Scholarship for the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, a 2020 Regional Arts and Culture Council grant, and the 2019 Tom and Phyllis Burnam Award in Nonfiction at Portland State University, where she earned her MFA in Creative Writing. Her essay, "Two Piece," was a 2019 Best American Sports Writing Notable. Her work has been published in The Atlantic, Washington Post, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Huffington Post, Entropy, Nailed, Water Stone Review, and elsewhere. She is the author of the forthcoming book Holding: A Memoir About Mothers, Drugs, and Other Comforts which will be released on August 26th, 2025. She currently resides in Portland, Oregon.