Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
The Writing Your Resilience Podcast is for anyone who wants to use the writing process to flip the script on the stories they’ve been telling themselves, because when we tell better stories about ourselves, we live better lives.
Every Thursday, host Lisa Cooper Ellison, an author, speaker, trauma-informed writing coach, and trauma survivor diagnosed with complex PTSD, interviews writers of tough, true stories, people who've developed incredible grit, and professionals in the field of psychology and healing who've studied resilience.
Over the past 7 years Lisa has taught writers how to write their resilience. Each time her clients and students have confronted the stories that no longer serve them, they’ve felt a little safer, become a little braver, and revealed more of their true selves. Now, with this podcast, she is creating a space for you to do this work too.
Equal parts instruction, motivation, and helpful guide, Writing Your Resilience is an opportunity for you to join a community of writers and professionals doing the work that helps us cultivate our authenticity and creativity.
More about Lisa Cooper Ellison: https://lisacooperellison.com
Sign Up For My Writing Your Resilience Newsletter and Get Your Free Copy of Write More, Fret Less: Five Brain Hacks that Will Supercharge Your Productivity, Creativity, and Confidence: https://lisacooperellison.com/newsletter-subscribe/
Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing
More than True Crime with Sarah Perry
Sarah Perry joins the Writing Your Resilience Podcast to talk about the choices they made while writing their award-winning memoir, After the Eclipse, and how each decision helped them build a book about their mother’s murder that was more than a true crime story. In this conversation, they explore the structure of Sarah’s book, how to build a character based on research, navigating the challenges of memory, and why closure isn’t what some of us are looking for.
Here are a few questions to ponder as you listen to this episode: What’s the toughest experience you’ve been through? If you wrote about it, what would you like readers to focus on? How might you need to structure this book in order to make that happen? How would you take care of yourself while dealing with the toughest parts of your story, especially if that meant researching police reports or interviewing other people to bring a character to life? What would you do with all that research?
Sarah Perry (she/they) is a memoirist and essayist who writes about love, trauma, gender-based violence, queerness, and the power dynamics that influence those concerns. She is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Her second book, a memoir-in-essays called Sweet Nothings, is forthcoming from Mariner in 2024. Shorter work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Off Assignment, Elle magazine, The Guardian, and other outlets. A former Tulsa Artist Fellow and recipient of fellowships from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, VCCA, Playa, and The Studios of Key West, she holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.
Episode Highlights
- 2:00 Framing a tough story
- 8:00 Building a character you can’t interview
- 12:00 Finding a resolution when closure isn’t possible
- 20:00 Navigating the challenges of memory
- 31:00 Structuring a dual timeline narrative
- 45:00 Navigating research and coping with tough material
Sarah’s essays:
Connect with Sarah
Website: sarahperryauthor.net
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahperry100
X: https://twitter.com/trickylarouge
Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Write More, Fret Less: https://lisacooperellison.com/newsletter-subscribe/
Website: https://lisacooperellison.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisacooperellison/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UColPDzpoQlVktIv7-f7ObRg
Facebook: ht
Sign up for Revise Your Memoir series: https://bit.ly/4ooLTDi
Connect with your host, Lisa:
Get Your Free Copy of Ditch Your Inner Critic: https://lisacooperellison.com/subscribe/
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Produced by Espresso Podcast Production
