Mimi Nichter
Revealing Our Hidden Stories: Writing about Trauma
October 23, 2026
11 AM PDT | 12 PM MDT | 1 PM CDT | 2 PM EDT
Are you holding on to a story of personal trauma, wanting to write but unsure of how to start or how much to tell? Or are you wrestling with your story on the page, trying to figure out how to “go deep”?
In this webinar, I will discuss how I finally came to write a memoir about a traumatic experience I had fifty years ago. I was twenty years old at that time, flying home to New York from a summer in Israel when armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine crash-landed my plane in a remote desert region in Jordan. Passengers were held on board for six days in sweltering heat without running water or flushable toilets. Most were sent home, but I was accused of being an Israeli soldier and was held hostage with thirty-one others in Amman, as a violent civil war erupted around us.
For most of my life, I rarely spoke about the experience. It was too frightening, and talking about it led me to relive it. My head ached and my breath shortened and for hours or days afterward, I felt saddened and drained. Not telling the story seemed safer. So I buried it, not even mentioning it in therapy. And then I decided it was time to write about it, to examine what had happened. What finally led me to this decision? How did I begin to remember a half-century old story? What was the experience of writing a memoir and dredging up buried memories? Was it healing because I had finally brought it into the light?
In our time together, we will consider:
- why it’s never too late to write a memoir about a traumatic event
- how research, including photographs and other visuals, can help you get started by triggering memories
- pros and cons of interviewing other people (I.e. family members, friends) as a tool to unlock your story
- what it means to “go deeper” in your writing and finding words/ images/ metaphors as a tool to share your experience with others
- the importance of editors at different stages of your writing
- barriers and stumbling stones to writing about trauma and how to move through them
About the Author
Mimi Nichter, Ph.D. is a professor emerita of cultural and medical anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is the author/coauthor of three anthropology books focused on key cultural issues in the U.S. and has been recognized for her scholarship with grants from the National Institutes of Health, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Mayo Clinic. She has conducted fieldwork and lived overseas for extended periods doing health and development projects in India, Indonesia, Turkey, and Sri Lanka.
Her latest book, Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience (Potomac Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press, 2026) was a winner of the 2026 Next Generation Indie Award for Memoir/Overcoming Adversity, a finalist for the International Book Award in Memoir and Creative Non-Fiction, and a finalist for the Literary Award in Non-Fiction at the 2026 Tucson Festival of Books. Her essays have appeared in Newsweek, HuffPost Personal, Brevity, and Career Authors.
