MTS 20: Reinventing the addiction memoir & writing as recovery with Tim Hillegonds

Timothy J. Hillegonds is the author of The Distance Between (Nebraska, 2019), a finalist for the 2020 Chicago Writers Association Book of the Year Award. A Pushcart Prize nominee, Tim's work has appeared in The Guardian, the Chicago Tribune, Salon, The Daily Beast, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Rumpus, Assay, Fourth Genre: Explorations in Nonfiction, River Teeth, Baltimore Review, Brevity, Under the Gum Tree, Hippocampus Magazine, The Fourth River, Midway Journal, RHINO, Bluestem Magazine, r.k.v.r.y. quarterly, and others.
In 2019, Tim was named by the Guild Literary Complex as one of their thirty "Writers to Watch,” and he currently serves as a contributing editor for Slag Glass City, a digital journal of the urban essay arts.

In the episode we talk about: 

• The practice of writing in rehab at the beginning of a serious writing life and as an integral part of healing
• Coming to nonfiction as a result of trauma
• Getting an undergrad degree at age 30
• Recovery as never being singular, we're constantly recovering from one thing or another
• Never writing the same book twice and giving yourself permission to try something different
• Crafting a persona in creative nonfiction
• Truth vs subjectivity in nonfiction, honesty in recovery
• Using the second-person perspective in nonfiction
• The challenges of an addiction memoir and a story of abuse from the perpetrator’s point of view
• The benefits of publishing with a university press
• Writing visceral scenes of using after being sober
• The moral inventory of self and wrestling with privilege working on his behalf
• How to reinvent a story like an addiction that is, let’s be honest, so played out
• Writers Hope Edelman, Michele Morano , and  Sheryl St. Germain 
• Find Tim online at timhillegonds.com.

Visit us online at moretothestorypodcast.com and visit Under the Gum Tree at underthegumtree.com. Follow Under the Gum Tree Twitter and Instagram @undergumtree. Follow me on Twitter @justjanna and @jannamarlies on Instagram. 

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