This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
About Casey Parks’s new book, Diary of a Misfit:
When Casey Parks came out as a lesbian in college back in 2002, she assumed her life in the South was over. Her mother shunned her, and her pastor asked God to kill her. But then Parks’s grandmother, a stern conservative who grew up picking cotton, pulled her aside and revealed a startling secret. “I grew up across the street from a woman who lived as a man,” and then implored Casey to find out what happened to him. Diary of a Misfit is the story of Parks’s life-changing journey to unravel the mystery of Roy Hudgins, the small-town country singer from grandmother’s youth, all the while confronting ghosts of her own.
In my interview with Casey, we talk about the documentary she filmed in her twenties with the assistance of filmmaker Aubree Bernier-Clarke, the way that documentary became a key text in unlocking memories of the past when writing the book, and the fragility of memory.
Raki Kopernik: I just finished reading your new book, Diary of a Misfit. The story was intended to be a documentary film, which you talk a lot about in the book. You’re also a print journalist for The Washington Post. How do you find the marriage between these two identities—documentarian and writer—and where do they collide?
Casey Parks: I originally wanted to do the project as a documentary, in part because when you write for a job, writing can become less fun. I love making things, documenting things, meeting and interviewing people, but my job was already stressful, so I didn’t want to just do the same thing as my job.
I actually started this as a podcast. I thought it would be fun learning a new medium. It didn’t feel like work, but I could never really figure out how to do the arc as a documentary. Aubree (Bernier-Clarke, the filmmaker mentioned in the book) and I tried for a long time, but we never found an ending that worked.
With documentary, you’re limited to just what you have. Aubree was much more inventive. They wanted to try reenactments or animation, but we didn’t have the money. With writing you don’t actually need money. There are tools that make writing easier, like a computer. But anyone with a pen and the back of a napkin can do it. Maybe you don’t want to write a whole book that way (laughing). You can make the world bigger because you can add context, which is harder to do in a documentary.
I resisted [writing] for a long time; I didn’t want it to feel like work. Then I took a class at Columbia and as soon as I tried doing it as a book I was like, oh I’m way better at writing. The first trip I went on [for the documentary] was just with my mom and my own little handheld camera. I was twenty-six when I started the filming, thirty-six when I started writing.
My professor [at Columbia] was like, your mom needs to be in the book. And I was like, no way my mom is not a part of this at all. You’re only saying this because she just died. But I pulled out that old tape and there were so many things that I could see then that I couldn’t see at twenty-six. I could see her trying to talk to me and I’d cut her off.
The point at which the book made sense for me was when I was at the Portland Community College library crying—because she had just died—and I was watching the footage. At one point my mom tells this guy, “We’re doing this as a journey of self-discovery because my daughter is gay.” I looked at her and said, “Don’t tell people I’m gay.” And when I was watching this at thirty-six I was like, wait a second, you have been out for eight years, why are you so angry if people know you’re gay?
RK: I felt that a lot in the book.
CP: Yeah. I didn’t realize that until I was watching it. There’s no way I could’ve written the book without that footage. It allowed me to get a lot of distance from myself and return to myself, watch myself in my twenties, dispassionately in a way you can’t do with memory.
Aubree would interview me after we’d do interviews and I look so resistant and uncomfortable. It was interesting to watch myself and be like, why are you so uncomfortable?
I don’t think most people know themselves well enough to know that, but I definitely didn’t understand what I was feeling at the time. There’s so much you can’t recreate. I have this contemporaneous interview where Aubree’s asking me, “What are you thinking, what are you feeling?” So I tried to go back and report on myself as a third person character. I don’t think I could’ve done that without all that footage.
RK: I wish I had footage of myself in my twenties! Memory is so selective and emotional.
CP: I told that teacher that my mom only went on one trip with me, so how could I put her in the book? And then I rewatched all the footage. There’s a part where I’m interviewing this old lady who’s playing a song for us, and I hear my mom start talking in the background and I’m like, wait, is my mother there?
So I started looking through more footage and found tons that she’s in. I had just blocked her out. I had this story that she disappointed me over and over again and never came with me on those interviews. She did disappoint me, but she came with me more than I remember.
RK: At what point in your writing process did you realize that you were actually writing a memoir? And why did you choose to write a memoir, as opposed to say, a novel? I know you’re not generally a fiction writer. Or do you also work across genres?
CP: I’ve never wanted to write fiction. Real life is too good. I didn’t want to write a memoir or be in the film. I see myself as a regular, invisible journalist. I interview other people about their lives. Obviously, my own life experience shapes the stories that I choose, but I don’t appear in the stories that I write.
But, Aubree asked me to be in it, my ex-spouse asked me to be in it, my professor asked me to be in it. I felt resistant because I thought, if my personal life is in this, I’ll never be able to have a newspaper job again. And I didn’t have a desire to be known. I still don’t.
RK: So do you actually need the story of Roy (Hudgins) to justify writing a memoir? I suppose it gave you a grounding point, this parallel of Roy not being able to be out, with your own experience of queerness. For me as a reader, it wasn’t really about Roy. It was about you.
CP: Well, I only wanted to write about Roy. But over time I realized the only way I could do it was if I included myself. People either wouldn’t give me grants, or I couldn’t sell the book without myself. So writing a memoir was the only way I would get to write about Roy.
My professor made me start by writing one chapter that included myself. He had this argument that was like, “It’s just for the class, no one will see it, why not try new stuff?” Once I wrote that chapter, I knew it was better than the other ones I’d already written (in third person). As resistant as I was, the storyteller in me knew it was a better story with me in it.
For a long time, I didn’t think about people reading it. I just tried to write the best, most honest version I could. It wasn’t until a year after it was written that I realized everyone would know stuff about me, stuff I’d never told my spouse or my best friend.
RK: So how does it feel now, knowing that people are reading all this about you?
CP: Horrible (laughing). It feels good when people write to me saying they see themselves and that the story is meaningful to them. But it’s very vulnerable and uncomfortable. I’ve talked to a few people who’ve written memoirs who’ve had similar experiences. I don’t think you get prepared for that feeling. Everyone I heard from had feelings about different events [in the book]. A lot of people said they wanted to give me a hug, and I don’t want that. It’s weird, you know, I’m single now so it’s hard to think about dating, like someone could read all about how I proposed to my ex.
RK: (Laughing) I didn’t even think of that.
CP: Sometimes I do interviews for my regular job now and the people have already read my book, so it tilts things.
I recently wrote about a trans teenager and a bunch of conservative blogs wrote about it saying, “Casey Parks is a proud and out lesbian,” which I think is so funny. Why can’t you just be a regular gay? Why do I have to be proud and out? LOL. I’m not proud of being gay. I’m not ashamed of it, but I’m also proud of being able to make good soups and proud of being nice to my friends. But proud that I’m attracted to women?
I want to feel like if I show up to an interview, I’m going to get a fair, unbiased shot. I don’t think anyone is truly unbiased, but I don’t want people to be against me before I even get there. It’s an emotional experience that I wasn’t prepared for. I had a bit of a breakdown when the book came out. And I’ve had people stop me on the street and ask if I was me and start talking to me about my mom, which is a very painful topic. I don’t want to be on a walk and suddenly be talking about my mom. The first few weeks I did a ton of interviews and was talking about my mom every day. It was very emotional. I think I’ve got some walls up.
And there’s a grief in finishing something you’ve worked on for so many years. When I was working on it, I was watching videos of all these people every day—during the pandemic, so everyone was a video—so in many ways my mother and grandmother were as alive as anyone else to me, even though they were actually dead.
My professor used to say, “If you think you can do anything else in this world other than write this book, do it, because it’s extremely hard and painful to write a book. You don’t make much money and no one gives you advice. The only reason to write a book is because you are compelled beyond anything believable.” I think he’s right. And for whatever reason, my life wouldn’t be complete unless I did something about Roy.
RK: Talk about the word, “Misfit.”
CP: Misfit is not a word I’d thought about before Roy. It has a juvenile quality, but I think Roy was kind of suspended in childhood. The title of my book is what he called his diaries. I think he wrote those late into adulthood, but I think he was very childlike. People who haven’t read the book think the misfit is me and this is my diary. I guess ultimately that becomes true, but it’s not a word I would’ve used to describe myself.
I came away from the reporting feeling like everyone I interviewed—straight, gay, cis, trans—feels like a misfit in some way. I think this has a lot to do with the rural south feeling left behind, or people living in poverty feeling like they don’t matter to this world. Everyone I interviewed had a very specific story about why they also were a misfit.
When I finished the book, I thought I’d get a tattoo to memorialize it. I have pictures of Roy’s journals and thought I’d get a tattoo of the way he wrote misfit. But then I thought, that’s too corny, too on the nose. It’s kind of a corny word, but I like being able to give him some agency in the naming of the book. I never even considered another title.
RK: Aubree mentioned that you’re working on making a limited series from the book. Can you talk about that?
CP: There’s nothing in stone, we just have an agent we’ve talked to, but it’s not in motion.
RK: Are you working on anything else?
CP: I don’t know that I’ll ever write another book. It’d have to be something that really compelled me. I like being a regular journalist. I like writing about one person, spending a decent chunk of time with them, then moving on to the next thing. But there are so many ways to be disappointed and hurt writing a book. I do know it’s a dream many people have and that I’m privileged to get to do it. But it’s hard.
RK: Writing doesn’t feel painful for me. Do you think it’s painful for you because you wrote a memoir that’s so deep and personal?
CP: Yeah. I don’t think writing in general is painful, and I actually think that’s a harmful trope, how people say they hate writing. I read Big Magic last year.
RK: Yes I love that book!
CP: Elizabeth Gilbert is an amazing and smart writer. People might think it’s cheesy, but I love that she talks about how detrimental it is to tell yourself that writing is pain, that you only have to decide that it’s not and to embrace that your first draft isn’t going to be perfect. You get to revise.
I find a ton of joy in editing. It’s so cool to see something become better with input, to get to your fifth draft and know that the version people are going to see is better than the first version you’re going to write, that the editor is here to make you look good. Editors never get credit. I think people feel embarrassed to say they like writing and they think it’s fun.
RK: Because it’s supposed to be a struggle. The struggling artist trope.
CP: Yeah. I don’t think in general it is. But the hard part of writing my book was not sentence construction or outlining. It was facing things I’ve spent my whole life working hard not to face, and sitting with the grief of my mother, things she did to me, holes inside of me. That said, I’ve never been happy because I’ve been holding onto pain, not processing it.
This New Year’s was the first I felt hopeful, more like a full person that has value beyond what I can write. Maybe it wouldn’t be painful if it were not about me.
My good friend Andrea Elliot wrote this book, Invisible Child. I’d like to write a book like that, about someone else. Especially about a teenager. I love writing about kids.
RK: So you don’t write in other genres like fiction or poetry? Do you have any other art practices? What inspires you?
CP: Before this book I would’ve said no. I’ve been working on this book for my entire adult life.
RK: Sounds like it.
CP: Like I mentioned, I had a bit of an emotional breakdown when the book came out, and I started going to therapy. My therapist made me try things I thought I’d be bad at. I always thought I’d be bad at any kind of [visual] art, so I got some watercolors. Now I paint every day. By no means will I become a selling artist. But it’s fun to learn and figure out how it works.
I have to be really present otherwise I’m half in and out of my body. But with watercolor, once that water goes it starts going. You can’t control it, so it’s been very therapeutic. If I’m a happier person I can be a better writer.
I like to read and I journal a lot. Every season I take videos of people and then do a video wrap up to a cheesy song. I used a bunch of country songs this last year. I think writing the book helped me love parts of the south from my childhood that I had to give away. I did one to Keith Urban’s, “Somebody Like You,” which is a very happy, sunny song. I did Lil Nas X, “That’s What I Want,” like I want somebody to love me. (Laughing) I did a Chvrches song, “Clear As Blue,” for my breakdown season. The lyrics are like: Light is all over us like it always was but it’s not enough. I listened to that song a lot this fall. There’s a line about being in the eye of a hurricane and holding onto the shifting ground, which is how I was feeling. And when I had a girlfriend last year and I was super in love with her, I used The Chicks, “Cowboy Take Me Away,” because she drove a pickup truck and loved being in nature. It’s fun to document and go back and see the whole season.
RK: What are you reading right now? And what books or writers do you come back to for inspiration?
CP: I just read two great books. Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones. It’s the best memoir I’ve ever read. It’s very personal but also philosophical. The structure is bonkers, but she holds it all together. I don’t like reading memoirs because, when you’re reading a book, you want to find out what happens. In memoir, for the most I know what happens. You get a book deal.
There were parts in my memoir where I made the mistake of writing, not as a writer, but as a daughter. When I recorded the audiobook a year later, I was like, this should not be in here. This is mom grief, not professional writing.
RK: But that’s also the marriage in writing. It’s not compartmentalized from who we are. It’s part of our healing, a way to move through life, even if it’s published.
CP: Yeah, and I’ve said to people, I wish it were 50 pages shorter. With memoir, sometimes I feel like, why am I reading this? It’s not driving the narrative tension. There are some notable exceptions though, people who are such good writers, who know how to make tension that’s not just about some surprise twist. I think Cheryl Strayed did a great job with that in Wild. You know she’s gonna survive because she’s got this book deal and she’s writing, but she’s such a good writer that you want to stay with her.
And circling back, Chloé Cooper Jones’s book has so much tension. It’s a book that’s trying to discover what happens, but she withholds information in a way that keeps you wondering. Each chapter has an arc, and it’s so personal and intimate. She reveals the world in a new way and brings in all this philosophy.
The other great book is, If I Survive You, short stories about a Jamaican in Miami, by Jonathan Escoffery. The first two stories are second person which I hate, but it really works.
There are also articles I come back to again and again, all written by Katherine Boo. At least once a year I go back to her work and try to figure out how she does it. She’s literally a genius—she has a MacArthur Genius Grant. “The Marriage Cure,” and, “After Welfare,” are my favorites. The best first sentence: “One July morning last year in Oklahoma City, in a public housing project named Sooner Haven, twenty-two year old Kim Henderson, pulled a pair of low rider jeans over a high rising gold lamé thong and declared herself ready for church.”
Her writing isn’t showy but she’s so good at specific details. The best thing she said to me was, “The mess is the story.” I think of that all the time. We have this urge to clean things up so they fit what we think people believe about a narrative, but that’s not actually good writing.
RK: I think that’s true in journalism but not in fiction. In fiction, that’s what you do, right? That’s how you make a story interesting.
CP: Yeah. She’s my North Star lighthouse. Very few months go by that I don’t read something by her to just remember how to be who I want to be.
My holy trinity are all Washington Post reporters: Katherine boo, Ann Holland, David Finkle. They are the people whose stories I read over and over again and the reason I wanted to work at The Washington Post. The reason I wanted to be who I wanted to be as a kid. They all write books now too. Katherine Boo’s last book, Behind the Beautiful Forevers, came out a decade ago.
I read Rita Dove’s poetry too. And I read the beginning of (Cheryl Strayed’s) Wild many times while working on my book. It has a great first sentence, structurally, how to move back and forth in time, which I thought about a lot.
RK: I think about the first line a lot too. If I don’t like the first line of a book, I won’t read it. Your first line is really good.
CP: For probably an entire year I had a different first line and it wasn’t good! And I really care about the first sentence too. I couldn’t see another way to do it.
Initially, the book started ten minutes before it does now. It was the fourth of July, we were having a barbeque, and my very conservative uncle stared at me across the meat and said, “Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomora?” I was like, “Yes I’m alive. I have.” And he was like, “God destroyed a whole nation to get rid of homosexuality. What makes you think he wouldn’t get rid of you?” And then my mom started crying and ran to the bathroom.
I couldn’t figure out how to make a good first sentence out of that. I asked my best friend, who is an editor, and she was like, “Why is the first sentence about your uncle? This is not a book about your uncle. What is this a book about?” I think I said, “Roy.” And she said, “This is a book about your mother, so the first sentence has to be about your mother.” And I thought, it’s also a book about religion. So how do I write a first sentence about my mom and about religion? I realized I could just cut those ten minutes and start in the middle.
RK: Aside from the first sentence, what do you think makes a story good, whole, interesting, complete?
CP: In everything I write, I think about what’s going to keep readers reading. What’s the question you’re posing in the beginning that’s going to be answered by the end, which is harder to do in a book than in a three-thousand-word article. But I think tension, rising and falling action, a sense that, at the end, your question has been answered.
Obviously my book leaves a lot of unanswered questions. But some things do get answered. Which is why I couldn’t make the documentary—there weren’t enough answers.
I think a good last sentence is as important as a first. Mine is a little cheesy but it works for me and is true for me.
I don’t like flowery language. Good writing, to me, is in details, not sentences, and strong verbs that aren’t repeated. In college I loved the word, transmogrify (laughter).
I thought every chapter should have a narrative arc too. I like writing that doesn’t announce itself as writing. I don’t want to be reminded that it’s constructed and is showing off. I want to be lost in it. I think grammar is oppressive and stupid and if people are communicating that’s all that matters. Grammar is a made-up ruling class thing. I love the way my people speak, even though it’s often incorrect. I get the meaning and it’s colorful and beautiful.
RK: Advice to new writers or journalists?
CP: Other than, “The mess is the story,” my favorite writing advice is from journalist Diana Sugg. She says, “Follow your ghosts,” like whatever things you can’t stop thinking about. Listen to yourself and what you’re passionate about. It could be anything. I had a friend who was trying to write crime stories. During the pandemic he had a bit of a breakdown too and he was like, “I just love video games and I want to write about video games.” I was like, “Yeah find a way to do that.” I think reading a lot is helpful to know what kind of writing you like. And practicing.
RK: What’s your writing practice like? When you say practice, what does that mean to you?
CP: I don’t have much time to practice now because I have to write for a living. But I think it’s important to have a schedule. When I didn’t have a job and I was writing this book, I woke up at six am every day and started writing at seven. I set measurable goals for myself. I had a five hundred word goal, so if I went over it I’d feel good about myself, and on the days that I didn’t, it was easier to force myself to sit there if I just had to write five hundred words.
My book is one hundred and thirty thousand words. That’s daunting and hard to conceptualize. But measurable goals, like five hundred words, I can do. Outlining is also important. A surprising number of my friends don’t outline.
RK: I never do. I hate it. I think I have trauma from school. But I also write fiction, which is more organic.
CP: Yeah, the ending and beginning should go together in journalism. I do a rough outline in an arc form. I do keep a journal and lists of words I like. My main advice is just to accept the idea that your first draft is going to be bad, and to not let that knock you down. That’s part of the process. I’ve been through so many iterations of this project. You have to trust that you’ll eventually get there. It might take a long time, but you’re constantly improving and understanding things differently.
I also have insane patience, which I don’t know if you can give as advice. I suggest getting a best friend as an editor. But really, finding people that you trust to give you feedback, whose taste you share, so you know if they tell you something’s not working, they’re not telling you not because they’re an asshole, but because they’re trying to help you. It’s a great gift to have someone spend time with your work. Open yourself up to feedback. You don’t want too many voices though, otherwise it can get messy.
RK: If you could have a dinner party with any writer or artist dead or alive, who would it be and what would you serve?
CP: I probably wouldn’t because I’d be too nervous.
RK: You have to! What if you didn’t have anxiety?
CP: Well then I wouldn’t be me (laughing).
I’m good at making soup. Chicken and rice, pozole, minestrone, gumbo. Chicken and rice is my go-to. I’d be too embarrassed to cook, but I’d have Audre Lorde over and I’d just let her talk. Also Natasha Trethewey or Jesmyn Ward, both Mississippi writers. Mississippi makes beautiful writers, and the way they write feels like home to me. They’re the people I want to be the official chroniclers of the south, whose work stands the test of time. Natasha, Jesmyn, and Kiese Laymon. Maybe I’d order catfish. I could probably make it, but I’d need a big pot. And you have to fry it. I get scared from popping oil. Which is why I’d make soup. It wouldn’t pop at me.
CASEY PARKS is a reporter for the Washington Post. Her memoir Diary of a Misfit was named one of the best books of 2022 by The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Booklist, Kirkus Reviews, New York Public Library and the Minneapolis Star Tribune. She spent a decade at The Oregonian, where she wrote about race and LGBTQ+ issues and was a finalist for the Livingston Award. Her articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Oxford American, ESPN, USA Today and The Nation. Diary of a Misfit is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.
Find her here and follow on Twitter: @caseyparks and Instagram: @caseyparkswrites
RAKI KOPERNIK is a first generation American, queer, Jewish writer. She is the author of The Things You Left and The Memory House, both Minnesota Book Award finalists. Her work has appeared in numerous publications and has been shortlisted and nominated for several other awards, including the Pushcart Prize for Fiction and the Pen Faulkner Award in Fiction. Her queer travel novel, No One’s Leaving, is forthcoming from Unsolicited Press in 2025. She is a fiction editor at MAYDAY Magazine and teaches creative writing at The Minneapolis College of Art and Design.
You can find her here and follow on Instagram @rakikopernik