F165. Extreme Exposure: Going Public with Deeply Personal Stories

E143-144, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Friday, March 29, 2019
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

After realizing that a story must be told, the writer faces difficult questions. What are the rewards for the writer in going public with their most personal experiences? What are the risks? How might these stories benefit individual readers? What is the value for the larger community? The #MeToo movement has demonstrated the power of sharing stories once shrouded in secrecy. In this panel, essayists and memoirists discuss artistic and personal complexities of sharing their most personal stories.


Participants

Moderator:

Alice Eve Cohen is a solo theatre artist, playwright, and author of two memoirs: The Year My Mother Came Back and What I Thought I Knew. She received her MFA from The New School, where she teaches creative writing and playwriting.

Nancy Hightower is the author of Elementari Rising and The Acolyte. She was the monthly sci-fi & fantasy reviewer for the Washington Post and the art columnist for Weird Fiction Review, where she wrote about the monstrous and grotesque. She teaches at Hunter College.

Alison Kinney is an essayist and the author of a book of cultural nonfiction, Hood. She teaches nonfiction writing at The New School and Catapult.

Doreen Oliver is a writer and performer. Her essays on autism, race, and the chaos and contradictions of parenting have appeared in several national publications, and her award-winning one-woman show, Everything is Fine Until It's Not, premiered Off-Broadway. She is working on a related memoir.

Julie Metz is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection. She has written for The New York Times, Salon, Dame, Slice, Glamour, Huffington Post and more. Julie has been a podcast guest on Dear Sugar Radio hosted by Cheryl Strayed and Women of the Hour hosted by Lena Dunham.

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center