Writing Your Resilience: Building Resilience, Embracing Trauma and Healing Through Writing Writing about Chronic Illness and Crafting the Hybrid Memoir with Jennifer Lunden
Author, Jennifer Lunden, shares her struggles with chronic illness, the challenges of writing a hybrid memoir, especially when you’ve not trained in science writing, and the grit all writers, but especially writers with disabilities, need to cultivate.
Jennifer Lunden Bio: Jennifer Lunden (she/her) is the author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life, which was praised by the Los Angeles Review of Books and Washington Post, and called a “genre-bending masterpiece” by Hippocampus. Her essays have appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Orion, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Longreads, and other journals; selected for a Pushcart Prize; and recognized as notable in Best American Essays. She has been awarded grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Canada Council for the Arts, and was the 2016 recipient of the Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Nonfiction. A Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and former therapist, in 2012, she was named Maine’s Social Worker of the Year. She lives with her husband, the artist Frank Turek, in Portland, Maine.
Resources Mentioned During This Episode
The Lady’s Handbook of Mysterious Illnesses
“The Hero’s Journey Starring You” on the Hidden Brain podcast
Episode Highlights
7:11 Feedback We Get When Writing About Illnesses
12:00 Structuring a Hybrid Memoir
22:00 The Two Types of Grit Writers with Disabilities Need
31:07 The Three Kinds of Stories We All Have
39:48 Jennifer’s Best Writing Advice
Connect with Jennifer
https://jenniferlunden.com/
https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.lunden
https://www.instagram.com/jleelunden/
https://staging.bsky.app/profile/jenniferlunden.bsky.social
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Produced by Espresso Podcast Production