Emotional Pacing: Lessons in Writing a Trauma Memoir
Writing a memoir about childhood familial trauma has taken me into fraught storytelling territory. The narrative centers on growing up in the shadow of my maternal aunt’s murder that took place when my mother was pregnant with me. She kept her sister’s murder a closely guarded secret throughout my childhood. This aunt was my mother’s...
A Review of Jennifer Sinor’s Ordinary Trauma: A Memoir
At a writing conference I recently attended, a panelist fielded a question from an attendee about what makes a good memoir. I’m intimately fascinated by this question since I devour memoirs and am writing my own. The panelist told this story: a creative writing professor he knows was asked by a student why she received...