F166.
Emotional Pacing in the Trauma Narrative
Friday, March 25, 2022
12:10 pm to 1:25 pm
Trauma memoirs require careful emotional pacing, which means modulating the presentation of emotionally charged material. Emotional pacing involves decisions about which events to include, how to withhold or present details, and how to sequence events, often using narrative techniques to manipulate the distance between the narrator and events. In this panel, four memoirist offer strategies for guiding the reader’s experience in memoirs of near death, family secrets, and other difficult stories.
Participants
Aggie Stewart is a Rhode Island-based writer and a fourth semester student in the Newport MFA program at Salve University. Her MFA focus is creative nonfiction. She is currently writing a memoir about growing up in the shadow of her mother’s sister’s murder, a closely guarded family secret.
Grace Talusan is the Fannie Hurst Writer in Residence at Brandeis University, and her memoir, The Body Papers, won the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing and Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction.
Katherine E. Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving a Life, which was a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice/Staff Pick. Her writing appeared in Best American Essays 2016. She teaches at Ashland University's low-res MFA and works as a trauma writing doula.
Alden Jones is the author of the books The Wanting Was a Wilderness, Unaccompanied Minors, and The Blind Masseuse. Her fiction and essays have appeared in BOMB, the Rumpus, the Cut, AGNI, and Best American Travel Writing. She teaches at Emerson College and the Newport MFA program.
