Date: September 10, 2015
Time: 4 PM PDT / 5 PM MDT / 6 PM CDT / 7 PM EDT
I’m pleased to have a conversation during our free Roundtable discussion in September with author Marilea Rabasa, author of Angie Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. Some of the themes of this book will be familiar to most of you: childhood and family events that shape a whole life, generational patterns that are hard to break, and the theme of how addiction spreads its sad gifts to everyone in the family. It’s a mother-daughter book, a book about family, what we treasure and what we are ashamed of. It’s a brave story that Marilea tells, and we will learn more from her about her journey. Marilea will talk about her writing process, finding the layers of her story and digging deeper into the truth as she wrote. And we will talk about the topic of pseudonyms and why Marilea chose to publish under another name.
You will learn:
• How to dig deep into your own story—and then go even further than you thought you could
• How Marliea learned more about herself and helped to heal her past by writing her memoir
• The reasons that she decided to use a pseudonym when she published her book
• How to tell the truth and still keep connections with your family
Listen to the recording here.
Bio
Marilea grew up in New England in a small Massachusetts town. How she got from there to the desert Southwest is an interesting tale.
For a number of years she was an ESL teacher in northern Virginia. Before that, she lived overseas in the Foreign Service. Just as she provided “springboards” for her students in writing class, her travels are something that she draws from to write stories.
She lives with her partner in New Mexico where they grow fruit in their orchard. They still get away to enjoy hiking all over the United States.
I really liked the roundtable yesterday. It was very interesting to me that Marilea wrote the book mainly to help other people with addictions and not to make a lot of money. This is something that writers don’t think about that much. We started to write our memoir for our children and our grandchildren and family in the future, but now we want everyone to read it when it gets published. I want to read Marilea’s book after hearing about it through the roundtable. I also like that it was emphasized that writing is healing. It has been for me mostly in my journals. Thanks for having roundtables. Crystal Meinstein