Today, Lori is interviewing Carolyn Hays. They’ll be talking about the freedom that can be found in a pen name and her new book A Girlhood: Letter to my Transgender Daughter. Have you signed up to be a DIY MFA Radio Insider yet? This is an exciting new monthly newsletter, especially for our podcast listeners…. Read more »
I came from a family of great storytellers. Growing up I saw first-hand how stories came about and then took on a life of their own. Some occurrences, which at the time, may have been harrowing experiences, would later be retold as a lighthearted story repeated with laughter and joy at family gatherings. The segments… Read more »
While writing Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family, the basic question was how to braid the stories of childhood, memory, and what came after for an immigrant family and in turn, what it meant to the reader. Is it a voyeuristic look at a country that’s foreign to the reader? Is it… Read more »
People write memoirs for many different reasons—as a way to process trauma, find healing, or even take revenge on family members who may not have been as nice as they could have been. I didn’t start writing a memoir for any of those reasons. I began writing down my stories because I felt compelled to… Read more »
I love a crisp new…anything, don’t you? Like a fresh new dollar bill, a chocolate bar wrapper still tucked snug against the corners, and don’t even get me started on the stiff, unyielding spine of a brand new book. There is also the comfort of a folded dollar you’ve saved, the crumbs on the wrapper… Read more »
The clinical definition of intergenerational trauma, also sometimes referred to as multigenerational trauma, is trauma that is “passed down from the generation that experienced the trauma to subsequent generations.” These traumas exist in many forms—they are the aftermaths of war, sexual and physical abuse, drug abuse, and suicides. Other family traumas, such as family secrets,… Read more »
My mission of self-discovery began when I started documenting my journey through breast cancer. But it did not end there. The more I wrote, the more I learned. I initially wanted to know why my breast cancer diagnosis set off such a wave of sorrow inside me. Why was my past trauma fast and furiously… Read more »
When you are writing a memoir, you spend a lot of your time excavating a past that is often elusive. To bring a memory to life on the page, you have to call up all the myriad details that filled it with emotion and meaning at the time, and the full force of any memory… Read more »
My memoir, The Ghost Marriage, wasn’t a book I planned to write. I had been working on short stories and a historical novel; it never occurred to me that anything in my own life would be interesting enough to write about. Then the bottom dropped out of my marriage, I went through a difficult divorce,… Read more »
Today, I have the pleasure of interviewing Jas Rawlinson. Jas is a best-selling author, book coach, and resilience speaker who specialises in stories that change lives. Growing up in a small country town, Jas first fell in love with the power of literature as a young girl, and would often disappear into the world of… Read more »
