Eric LeMay, "Remember Me: An Essay" (CutBank 2020)

This, my first podcast for the New Books Network, was a hard one … but, a good one. Listen in, as I talk cancer, parenting, writing, and Shakespeare’s Hamlet with my former professor and mentor, author Eric LeMay about his new chapbook, Remember Me: An Essay (CutBank 2020).

When I first read this beautiful gut-punch of an essay, where LeMay explores his relationship with his young son alongside his experience with a surprise cancer diagnosis, I was prompted by LeMay’s words to remember Hamlet crying out to the image of his father, saying: “Alas, poor ghost!” That father-ghost replying, “Pity me not, but lend thy serious hearing to what I shall unfold.”

So, listeners, “lend thy serious hearing” as LeMay and I talk intimately about the desire to be remembered while simultaneously letting that remembering take place outside and away from the self that is happening now and now and now and now.

Ellee Achten is a writer and editor exploring issues of home, health, memory, and attachment. She writes everything from magazine features to lyrical memoir to sci-fi novels. She is currently working on many projects, including a collection of essays about the traumatic connection between the body and mind. She can be reached at: elleeachten@gmail.com.

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