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Sarah Perry joins the Writing Your Resilience Podcast to talk about the choices they  made while writing their award-winning memoir, After the Eclipse, and how each decision helped them build a book about their mother’s murder that was more than a true crime story. In this conversation, they explore the structure of Sarah’s book, how to build a character based on research, navigating the challenges of memory, and why closure isn’t what some of us are looking for.

Here are a few questions to ponder as you listen to this episode: What’s the toughest experience you’ve been through? If you wrote about it, what would you like readers to focus on? How might you need to structure this book in order to make that happen? How would you take care of yourself while dealing with the toughest parts of your story, especially if that meant researching police reports or interviewing other people to bring a character to life? What would you do with all that research? 

Sarah Perry (she/they) is a memoirist and essayist who writes about love, trauma, gender-based violence, queerness, and the power dynamics that influence those concerns. She is the author of the memoir After the Eclipse, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Poets & Writers Notable Nonfiction Debut, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers pick. Her second book, a memoir-in-essays called Sweet Nothings, is forthcoming from Mariner in 2024. Shorter work has appeared in the Huffington Post, Off Assignment, Elle magazine, The Guardian, and other outlets. A former Tulsa Artist Fellow and recipient of fellowships from the Edward F. Albee Foundation, VCCA, Playa, and The Studios of Key West, she holds an M.F.A. in nonfiction from Columbia University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of North Texas.

Episode Highlights 

• 2:00 Framing a tough story
• 8:00 Building a character you can’t interview
• 12:00 Finding a resolution when closure isn’t possible 
• 20:00 Navigating the challenges of memory
• 31:00 Structuring a dual timeline narrative 
• 45:00 Navigating research and coping with tough material 

Sarah’s essays: 

• To the Man I made Into a Stranger 
• A Young Girl Searches for Truth After Her Mother’s Murder

Connect with Sarah 
Website: sarahperryauthor.net
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarahperry100
X: https://twitter.com/trickylarouge

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Website: https://lisacooperellison.co

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Produced by Espresso Podcast Production