Pitch and Synopsis:
Told in a nonlinear format, Leaving and Everything After (68,000 words) is a travel memoir that invites readers to analyze how one can accept death and define acceptance. Comparison titles include: Jennette McCurdy’s memoir, I'm Glad My Mom Died; Jhumpa Lahiri’s Roman Stories; and Colm Toibin’s Long Island.
Tiffany, a 29-year-old video producer in New York, becomes motherless overnight. Two years later, she leaves America to rediscover joy and assess her career intentions by returning to her birth country to live with her father and travel. While there, she unconsciously mourns the loss of her father and her childhood city, Chengdu, which she left to immigrate to America at the age of eight. Meanwhile, her father also begins to mourn – the lost opportunity of growing up with his daughter and the loss of the woman he still loves, Tiffany’s mother.
During her travels, Tiffany visits the autogenocide site in Cambodia and encounters two survivors, and follows her fear by snorkeling close to mantel rays in the Flores Sea. As her budget diminishes, she has less than three months left before her return to America. She then stumbles upon Bhutan, a landlocked country with 71% of its land under forest cover, and is drawn to its charm. Unsure if she should pursue the country, a group of tourists she meets in New Zealand helps her decide. The travel memoir closes in on how not every ending is conclusive and that some losses might have been a blessing.
I am seeking literary representation.
Email me at tiffanyyunedits at gmail dot com for the full manuscript or the first three chapters, etc.