Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me: Jessica Berger Gross
Jessica Berger Gross discusses her new memoir, Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home, walking away from her parents age of twenty-eight, and the importance of boundaries.
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Join NOW!Jessica Berger Gross discusses her new memoir, Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home, walking away from her parents age of twenty-eight, and the importance of boundaries.
...moreJason Diamond discusses his memoir Searching for John Hughes, confronting his childhood abuse, avoiding his parents, and writing about all of it.
...moreAnne Roiphe on respecting writers’ freedom to express the truth of their experiences, while also respecting their subjects’ prerogative to shun them for it.
...moreSari Botton sits down with humorist Samantha Irby to talk sex, family conflicts, and the creative freedom of being an orphan.
...moreSari Botton and Rebecca Walker talk about the challenges of writing about parents, becoming estranged from them, and then moving together past estrangement, to eventually heal the rift.
...moreWe sit down with Sari Botton, long-time Rumpus contributor and author of our “Conversations with Writers Braver Than Me” column, to talk about her new anthology, Goodbye To All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York, and more.
...moreIn Whip Smart, Melissa Febos unflinchingly chronicles five years in her early twenties when she was a dominatrix and heroin user. But the book is about so much more than those details.
...moreSometimes I fantasize about expanding these conversations beyond the one-on-one—getting a few particular writers into a room together to discuss the risky business of writing the sort of memoir or autobiographical fiction that might upset family, or others close to you. Actually, this column was born out of a burning desire to get Stephen Elliott […]
...moreSari Botton talks with Cheryl Strayed about how she keeps finding the courage to be honest in her work—about herself and others around her.
...moreI realize I’m especially drawn to memoirs, novels and story collections in which the author or protagonist is at odds with one parent or both, and wrestles with feeling like a tremendous disappointment to them.
...moreI’ve been living in NYC for years so I am cautiously optimistic about everything.
...moreWhat is the chance of one of those books living up to its pre-release hype? Of earning back its advance?
...moreAlbert, who is at work on her second novel, describes both books as “personal” as opposed to autobiographical, although they are rooted in her own experiences.
...moreI wasn’t surprised to find that I enjoyed Havrilesky’s book and really related to it. There is so much overlap in our stories, I should probably hate her for beating me to the finish line by miles – thousands of them.
...moreFlynn and I discussed his approach to writing the memoirs—as well as the advantages of having Protestant parents—over coffee in the West Village.
...moreI wrote the book with a tremendous suspension of disbelief; I wrote it as if no one was ever going to read it. I know that sounds like a cliché.
...more“We all think we’re retaliating,” Elliott writes. “We all think our actions are justified by someone else’s actions. But actually we’re responsible for what we do.”
...moreAs someone who was raised with reform Judaism, my negative experiences with religion pale next to Auslander’s.
...moreIn an effort to embolden myself to move past this crippling fear and go on writing – or give up altogether – I’ve begun interviewing memoirists I admire.
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