R234. Breaking Silences: Women’s Memoir as an Act of Rebellion

Room 607, Washington State Convention Center, Level 6
Thursday, February 27, 2014
3:00 pm to 4:15 pm

 

Pregnancy. Rape. Motherhood. Domestic violence. Tillie Olsen writes: Why are more women silenced than men? The women on this panel also ask: why, when women write about the full experience of being female in this culture are our stories seen as less worthy of literary merit than those of male counterparts? We’ll address our experiences with writing taboo subjects and discuss the conscious and unconscious biases that keep women from the transgressive act of writing honestly about their lives.


Participants

Moderator:

Janice Gary is the author of Short Leash: A Memoir of Dog Walking and Deliverance. She is the recipient of the Christine White Award for memoir and the Ames Award for Essay and is a fellow of The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

Kate Hopper is the author of Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood and Use Your Words: A Writing Guide for Mothers. She teaches writing online and at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. She has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship and a Sustainable Arts Grant.

Anna March's essays/fiction/poetry/reviews have appeared in New York magazine, Salon, The Rumpus, and numerous other publications/anthologies. She writes extensively on gender/sexuality/the body. Her novel, The Diary of Suzanne Frank, is forthcoming, as is her memoir. She was a 2012 Pushcart nominee.

Connie May Fowler is a novelist, short story writer, memoirist, and screenwriter. The author of seven books, her novel Before Women had Wings won the Southern Book Critics Circle Award and the Francis Buck Award. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times, Oxford American, and elsewhere.

Rosemary Daniell is the award-winning author of eight books of poetry and prose, including her revolutionary memoirs, Fatal Flowers: On Sin, Sex and Suicide in the Deep South and Sleeping with Soldiers. Her memoir in progress is My Anarchist Heart.

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