R215. More Than Me: Memoirists Looking Outward

Room 006D, Henry B. González Convention Center, River Level
Thursday, March 5, 2020
1:45 pm to 3:00 pm

 

Five accomplished authors combine tools of memoir—intimacy, vulnerability, memory—with research to look past the personal journey to bigger questions about the ethics of science and medicine, drug policy, illegal enterprise, religion, marriage, race, and gender. Our books may be listed as memoirs, but our obsessions are external. We’ll discuss the unique challenges and advantages of using a charismatic first-person narrator to propel investigative nonfiction. It’s memoir minus the “me."


Outline & Supplemental Documents

Event Outline: More_Than_Me_event_outline.docx

Participants

Moderator:

Alia Volz is the author of Home Baked: My Mom, Marijuana, and the Stoning of San Francisco, forthcoming in April 2020. You'll find her work in The Best American Essays 2017, The New York Times, Tin House, and Dig If You Will the Picture: Writers Reflect on Prince.

Barrie Jean Borich is the author of Apocalypse, Darling. Her memoir Body Geographic won a Lambda Literary Award, and her book-length essay My Lesbian Husband won a Stonewall Book Award. She’s a professor at DePaul in Chicago, where she edits Slag Glass City, a journal of the urban essay arts.

Hasanthika Sirisena's stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Epoch, StoryQuarterly, Narrative, and other magazines. She is a recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer's Award and the 2015 Juniper Prize for Fiction. Her short story collection is The Other One.

Jaed Coffin is the author of the memoirs Roughhouse Friday and A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Sun, Nautilus, and the Moth Radio Hour. Jaed teaches in the MFA and undergraduate nonfiction programs at the University of New Hampshire.

Nadia Owusu

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February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

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