F250. Me Too: Writing Your Way Through (and Out of) Childhood Sexual Abuse

Portland Ballroom 256, Oregon Convention Center, Level 2
Friday, March 29, 2019
1:30 pm to 2:45 pm

 

How to write the fragmented, charged, often shameful memory of childhood sexual abuse in a way that isn’t mired in self-pity, rage, or the standard-issue language of confession? And how to excavate a history half- or mis- remembered, as early trauma often is? What are the pitfalls when writing becomes therapy and when publishing becomes public? Five poets discuss their struggles with these questions as both writers and teachers to make poems that demonstrate the courage to heal.


Participants

Moderator:

Nickole Brown’s books are Sister , Fanny Says (with a 2017 audiobook), and To Those Who Were Our First Gods. She received a Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry and an NEA. She teaches at Sewanee and the Hindman Settlement School.

Laure-Anne Bosselaar is the author of The Hour Between Dog & WolfSmall Gods of Grief (Isabella Gardner Prize), and A New Hunger (ALA Notable Book). She taught at Sarah Lawrence College and teaches at the Solstice Low-Residency MFA Program. Her fourth collection is, These Many Rooms.

Dorianne Laux’s new and selected poems, Only as the Day Is Long, is forthcoming. She teaches for the Program in Creative Writing at North Carolina State University and is founding faculty of Pacific University's Low Residency MFA Program.

Richard Hoffman is author of seven books, Half the House: A Memoir; the poetry collections Without Paradise, Gold Star Road, Emblem, and Noon until Night; Interference & Other Stories; and the memoir Love & Fury. He is Senior Writer-in-Residence at Emerson College.

Kamilah Aisha Moon is the author of Starshine & Clay and She Has a Name. A Pushcart prize winner, Moon was also selected as a PSA New American Poet. Widely published in journals and anthologies, Moon holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and teaches at Agnes Scott College.

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