Today’s guest, Margo Steines, is the author of the recently-released and captivatingly titled memoir Brutalities: A Love Story. A professor, creative coach, and editor on the faculty of the University of Arizona Writing Program, Margo teaches small-group creative nonfiction writing classes and seminars. As she describes them, they are the classes she wishes she had found when she was a fledgling writer: warm, generative, and trauma-informed, with value placed on process before product. So she’s helping people find their voice. We are very much in favor of that on this show.Trauma, as it turns out, is a central theme in Brutalities, her memoir of a couple of decades spent in parts of the world and of life that most of us have only heard about: a former professional dominatrix, Steines takes her readers on a journey through S&M parlors, mental institutions, hospital detox wards, antidepressants, and a couple of suicide attempts thrown in for good measure. It might seem a little counterintuitive to be discussing the memoir of a former dominatrix on this show, especially one that explores, in graphic detail, what it’s like to both give and receive (with consent) the most extreme kinds of physical pain imaginable. But Margo Steines finally found the tickle on the other side of all that suffering. She’s here to tell us all about it.