Second Acts: Resolution & Irresolution after Memoir

13 May 2023
6:00 pm
Church of the Village
 $20
Maggie Smith, Isaac Fitzgerald, Ashley C. Ford

Writing a memoir typically requires condensing the messiness and nonlinearity of a life into a narrative structure, with a beginning, middle, and end. And while biographers of historical figures can rely on the tidy conclusion of a subject’s death, memoirists’ lives and cultural imprints are still being shaped in real-time. How do memoirists grapple with their readers’ need for resolution, particularly when they might not feel that sense of resolution themselves? Can memoir be a form of healing? And how do they navigate their life and story beyond the last published page, and the vulnerability of presenting their life to an audience? Acclaimed memoirists Isaac Fitzgerald (Dirtbag Massachusetts), Ashley C. Ford (Somebody’s Daughter), and Maggie Smith (You Could Make This Place Beautiful) join Miwa Messer, host of the Poured Over podcast, for an intimate and tender discussion of how we tell the most vulnerable of stories: our own.

Miwa Messer
Ashley C. Ford
Maggie Smith
Isaac Fitzgerald