F144. The Ethics of the Artist: Writing About Family in Essay and Memoir

Room 405, LA Convention Center, Meeting Room Level
Friday, April 1, 2016
10:30 am to 11:45 am

 

After a writer realizes that a story must be told comes a difficult question. Can this story be told? Nonfiction writers must grapple with the rights of others in their stories. In this panel, essayists and memoirists discuss the ethical and artistic quandaries of writing nonfiction. What are the real costs of writing about family, for both the writer and those written about? How do responsibility and freedom intersect in nonfiction?


Participants

Moderator:

Laura Cronk

Alice Eve Cohen is a solo theatre artist and author of two memoirs, The Year My Mother Came Back and What I Thought I Knew, winner of Elle’s Literary Grand Prix for nonfiction. She has toured her solo plays internationally. She has a BA from Princeton and an MFA from The New School, where she teaches creative writing.

Julie Metz is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Perfection. The recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship, she has written on a wide variety of women's and family issues for publications including the New York Times, Dame magazine, Huffington Post, Redbook, and Glamour.

Aspen Matis's essays have appeared in The New York Times, Tin House, and Psychology Today. Her memoir, Girl in the Woods, tells the story of her college date rape and subsequent hike from Mexico to Canada along a continuous wilderness footpath called the Pacific Crest Trail.

Honor Moore

#AWP24

February 7–10, 2024
Kansas City, Missouri

Kansas City Convention Center