How “Fast Car” Taught Me to Trust My Story

By Vicki Mayk

A decade ago, an agent read the memoir about my daughter that I had labored over in my MFA program. After extolling the positives— “very well written”—she announced, “There are already a lot of memoirs out there about mental illness.”

The pronouncement was clear: The market was saturated.

Disheartened and paralyzed, I stepped away from the memoir and wrote another book. But when an epiphany about my memoir’s theme brought me back to the manuscript, I still wondered if i...