Theater video tags: memoir

The Gospel of Doubt

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In this TED Talk, Casey Gerald speaks about a poignant day in his childhood and how those events altered his thoughts on belief, faith, and doubt. Gerald is the author of the debut memoir, There Will Be No Miracles Here (Riverhead Books, 2018), and is featured in “The Genre of Resistance” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Boy Erased

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Boy Erased is a film based on Garrard Conley’s 2016 coming-of-age memoir of the same name. Lucas Hedges stars as a young man who is forced by his fundamental Baptist parents, played by Russell Crowe and Nicole Kidman, to attend a gay conversion therapy program. The film is written and directed by Joel Edgerton, who also costars as the program’s head therapist.

Donald Hall

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In an interview with Web of Stories, poet and memoirist Donald Hall recounts his first meeting with T. S. Eliot. Hall is the author of the memoir A Carnival of Losses: Notes Nearing Ninety (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Clemantine Wamariya

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“I wanted to learn how to write English and learn how to tell a story so I could communicate the experiences that I did not see in history books....” Clemantine Wamariya talks about storytelling and her debut memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War and What Comes After (Crown, 2018), which she cowrote with Elizabeth Weil.

Gregory Pardlo on Air Traffic

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Gregory Pardlo talks about the difference between writing poetry and creative nonfiction, and the universality of storytelling in this interview with Rich Fahle at the 2018 AWP Annual Conference & Book Fair in Tampa. Pardlo’s debut memoir, Air Traffic: A Memoir of Ambition and Manhood in America (Knopf, 2018), is featured in Page One in the May/June issue of Poets & Writers Magazine

Anthony Ray Hinton

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“Reading really saved my life in a way that people probably will never be able to understand.” Anthony Ray Hinton, author of the memoir, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (St. Martin’s Press, 2018), speaks about starting the only known book club on death row and the power of reading.

Xiaolu Guo

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“I found this liberation from the limitation…” In this Asia Society video, Xiaolu Guo explains why writing in English, her second language, is so freeing. Guo is the winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography for her memoir, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China (Grove Press, 2017).

Amy Tan on Memoir Writing

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“Our lives don’t happen chronologically in memory, and a good memoirist has to know how to structure that memoir in a way that you can see the shaping of a life....” Amy Tan, whose second memoir, Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir (Ecco, 2017), is featured in Page One of the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about the genre and about Mary Karr’s memoir writing.

The Glass Eye

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“My parents raised me in a white-sided saltbox house, the sort children draw in crayon. Years before we lived there, it had been cut in half and moved across town. We never learned why.” Jeannie Vanasco, who is featured in “The Unknown Yet Inevitable: Debut Literary Nonfiction of 2017” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from her debut memoir, The Glass Eye (Tin House Books, 2017), at the University of Chicago.

Eileen Myles on the Festival Neue Literatur

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“As an English language writer, I’m not often asked to stretch culturally...” Eileen Myles talks about writing and nationalism, and the importance of international events like the Festival Neue Literatur. Myles’s debut memoir, Afterglow (a dog memoir) (Grove Press, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

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