Listen:
My heart is with all those who have been impacted by recent fires in Southern California.
Zibby Books, whose founder, Zibby Owens was impacted, has created a clothing drive for two weeks from Monday, January 20th – Sunday, February 2nd at 1121 Montana Avenue, Santa Monica, CA from 9 am – 6 pm.
If you know anyone who has lost their home or is indefinitely displaced and needs clothing, please have them sign up for a time-slot here. (Before or after they “shop” at the pop-up — or any other time we’re open — they can come to Zibby’s Bookshop at 1113 Montana Avenue for free books for them and their children
Now for today’s episode. My friend Bill Dameron (7in episode #47) mentioned Christie Tate’s book Group to me a few years ago, when I told him that I wanted to work on my own memoir. I read her book cover to cover and knew she would be a fantastic guest on the program … and she is.
In This Episode:
- The inspiration behind Christie’s memoir, Group, and its impact on readers worldwide
- The inciting incident that drove the rest of her book
- How she initially started with a prologue that became her ending and why she made that choice
- Why vulnerability and honesty are crucial in her storytelling
- The ticking time bomb that informed her memoir and why that’s key to building dramatic tension
- How group therapy transformed her life and how ‘prescriptions’ offered a structure for her writing
- The key to using detail and specificity to bring readers into the story
- How Christie found her throughline and worked it into the memoir
- Her advice for aspiring writers: go where the “heat” is, and how to do that
- The power of images in writing
- What to do when you get stuck and how being a reader before a writer, helps
Watch on YouTube
About Christie Tate
Christie Tate is an essayist and author who writes creative nonfiction and memoir. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Group, which was a Reese’s Book Club selection and has been translated into 19 languages. She is also the author of B.F.F.— A Memoir of Friendship Lost & Found. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and elsewhere. Her essays have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, and Kiese Laymon selected her essay, Promised Lands, as the winner of the New Ohio Review’s 2019 nonfiction contest. She writes about addiction, eating disorders, friendship, alienation, recovery, and her Grandma’s farm in Forreston, Texas. She grew up in Dallas and now lives in Chicago with her family. She has finally stopped telling people that she graduated first in her law school class. Please don’t hate her because she has no pets.
Connect with Christie Tate
Buy Group on Estelle’s Bookshop
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