F118. Rewriting History: Why It's Not Okay to Fictionalize Our Memories

B114, Oregon Convention Center, Level 1
Friday, March 29, 2019
9:00 am to 10:15 am

 

Every so often, literary scandals seem to surface, particularly when it comes to memoirs. Is there an unspoken code of ethics that exists for memoirists and essayists? Or is it something deeper, something psychological that gives birth to the betrayal we feel upon discovering that a nonfiction writer has invented a character, setting, or memory? In this panel, nonfiction writers discuss the difficulty in cultivating memories while managing this genre’s ethical demands and expectations.


Participants

Moderator:

Mia Herman is the Outreach Director and Creative Nonfiction editor for F(r)iction. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Hofstra University, and her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications.

Patricia Horvath's memoir All the Difference explores the relationship between disability and self-identity. She is a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in both fiction and creative nonfiction, and her work has been published widely in literary journals.

Lee Gutkind, founding editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine, is the author or editor of many books, including Many Sleepless Nights: The World of Organ Transplantation and Stuck in Time: The Tragedy of Childhood Mental Illness. He is Distinguished Writer in Residence at Arizona State University.

Sarah Gerard is the author of the essay collection Sunshine State, a New York Times critics' choice, and the novel Binary Star, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times' first fiction prize. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Granta, The Baffler, Vice, and elsewhere. 

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