What can reading teach us about loss, healing, and survival? How can we transform anger into empathy? What can we learn from the creative act about turning personal setbacks into opportunities for self-discovery and growth?

Andre Dubus III’s nine books include the New York Times’ bestsellers House of Sand and Fog, The Garden of Last Days, and his memoir, Townie. His work has been included in The Best American Essays and The Best Spiritual Writing anthologies. His novel, House of Sand and Fog was a finalist for the National Book Award and was made into an Academy Award-nominated film starring Ben Kingsley and Jennifer Connelly. His most recent books are the novel, Such Kindness and a collection of personal essays, Ghost Dogs: On Killers and Kin.
Dubus has been a finalist for the National Book Award, and has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, The National Magazine Award for Fiction, two Pushcart Prizes, and is a recipient of an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award in Literature. His books are published in over twenty-five languages, and he teaches at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.

"If you want to check in and get some clarity on what you believe, I tell people, well, just write something really honest and emotionally naked and read it back to yourself, and you'll see a lot of what you believe, think, fear, regret, desire, et cetera.

We always reveal ourselves in our work. The truth is, I identify far more with those on the outside than on the inside. And even though from the outside it looks like I'm on the inside – you know, I'm a successful author, professor, white, privileged, educated, straight male from the United States – you can't get more privileged than that in a patriarchal, misogynistic, racist society. But I don't identify with those people. And I don't know if it's because of my youth or just how I am in the world. When you read that passage from Ghost Dogs back to me about my hatred of all those things. That hatred for those kinds of injustices has never left me. In fact, they've just grown sharper."

www.andredubus.com
www.andredubus.com/ghost-dogs
www.andredubus.com/house-of-sand-and-fog
www.andredubus.com/such-kindness

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#1260 UNSTUCK-IFICATION (The Process of Getting Unstuck) - Harps (PT1)