T241.
Writing About Your Trauma Without Re-Traumatizing Yourself
Thursday, February 8, 2024
3:20 pm to 4:35 pm
Writing about trauma can be therapeutic, but revisiting painful subjects can also take a toll on the writer. Beyond therapy, what can a writer do? This panel of essayists, poets, memoirists, teachers, and coaches will share how they’ve structured their writing practices to integrate support and healing, strategies for delving into traumatic memories without deteriorating psychologically, and their reasons for choosing to write in the face of pain.
Participants
Elizabeth Kleinfeld writes about grief and trauma on her blog and in academic and memoir essays. She directs the writing center at Metropolitan State University of Denver and is a trustee of the University Press of Colorado. She is writing a memoir about being her husband’s caregiver.
Lisa Cooper Ellison is a trauma-informed writing coach, author, and speaker with an EdS in clinical mental health counseling and a background in mindfulness. She is represented by The Bindery. Her essays have appeared in HuffPost, Kenyon Review, and Hippocampus Magazine among others.
Athena Dixon is the author of the essay collections The Loneliness Files and The Incredible Shrinking Woman. Her poetry appears in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 2: Black Girl Magic and her craft work in Getting to the Truth: The Craft and Practice of Creative Nonfiction. She lives in Philadelphia.
Margo Steines holds an MFA in CNF from the University of Arizona. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The Sun, Brevity, Off Assignment, "Modern Love," the anthology Letter to a Stranger, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities.
Libby Kurz is a writer, nurse, and USAF veteran. Her poetry chapbook, The Heart Room, was published in 2019 by Finishing Line Press, and she won second place in the Iowa Review's 2023 Jeff Sharlet Memorial Contest. She teaches memoir and trauma writing workshops to veteran communities in Norfolk, Virgina.
