The Welch children tell their story in "The Kids Are All Right," a book just published by Harmony Books.
"I look at the book as a real love letter to my mother," Liz Welch says.
The book was first conceived as a short story, says the award-winning writer, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, Vogue, Glamour and other magazines. It was 15 years in the making, starting with her early thoughts about writing the story. But when she penned her initial chapter, about her father's funeral, she quickly realized the story was not hers alone.
Ms. Welch enlisted the help of her youngest sibling, Diana -- a writer and curator for the multimedia label Monofonus Press and a reporter for the Austin Chronicle in Texas. They, in turn, reached out to the eldest sibling, Amanda, who makes her living gardening and making bath products on a farm in Virginia, and Dan, a Brooklyn-based location manager and scout for film and television. Both agreed to be interviewed by their two writing sisters for their chapters.
But if the four siblings are the authors, Liz Welch says, Karen Braziller's Little Red House Workshop in Orient provided the "midwives" who brought the book into the world.
As her work progressed, members of the workshop offered advice about the writing and the emotional support she needed to deal with the pain the story evokes.
"I could write the hardest pages here because the beauty makes you feel that it's going to be OK," Ms. Welch says about Orient. She credits her fellow workshop participants, Ms. Braziller, Clyde "Skip" Wachsberger, LB Thompson and Paula Mauro, with lovingly guiding her when she was being too expansive or getting off topic.
"LB is a poet and she's all about language; Karen is an excellent structural editor; and Skip is one of the best line editors I've ever met," Ms. Welch says.
"They were my guinea pigs," she adds. "I provided the raw material, but they spit-polished it for me."
While the book jacket identifies Ms. Welch as being from Brooklyn, where she and husband Gideon have an apartment, she admits she didn't want to identify Orient to her readers because, "I feel protective of this place."
There were memories she didn't realize she had until she began writing.
"My family, they're all story-tellers," Ms. Welch says, recalling how the four agreed to tackle the project. "There was never a hesitation."
"We're sharing very painful memories," she says. "It was loss upon loss and you can't wrap your head around it as a kid." But if that was painful, the split from one another "was a whole different kind of loss. Losing our parents wasn't the worse thing that happened to us," she says.
The Welch children ranged in age from 8 to 20 when they were separated. The eldest, Amanda, was unable to take in three siblings, so they were forced to lived apart, often in less-than-ideal circumstances. Diana was completely cut off from the others, who had only infrequent visits with one another. The stories of their very different experiences, the lifestyles visited upon them and their individual struggles to maintain the Welch spunk and sense of humor include often conflicting memories. But if each, at times, felt forgotten by the others, all four, in fact, thought constantly of their siblings and yearned to be reunited.
"It was such a collaborative process," she says of working with her siblings. In the process of writing, Liz Welch says, Diana "stopped being my little sister and became my best friend." The two are already thinking about what other projects they might work on together.
All four siblings did an initial spate of joint interviews when the book was launched in New York City last Saturday. This weekend, Liz Welch will be joined by Ms. Braziller, Ms. Thompson and Mr. Wachsberger in reading excerpts at Aldo's Café on Front Street in Greenport. Ms. Braziller will read for Diana, Ms. Thompson for Amanda and Mr. Wachsberger for Dan.
"This reading is a love letter to Karen Braziller and her workshop," Ms. Welch says.
jlane@timesreview.com
BOX INFO BELOW
'The Kids Are All Right'
By Liz, Diana, Amanda and Dan Welch
Reading at Aldo's Café, Front Street, Greenport
6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 10