Episode 8: Catherine Ricketts on "Eloquent Limbs" and "Books to be Buried In"

Explicit content warning

07/26/18 • 61 min

Essayist and songwriter Catherine Ricketts (http://catherinedanaricketts.com/) joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss her essay "Eloquent Limbs" and her song "Books to be Buried In," which she also performs. Cat, who joined us for our live event in April, discusses how she decides to approach particular experiences through songwriting versus through essay writing, her direct and vivid approach to writing about her father's illness and death, and how her conversations with him informed this.

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Episode 7: Victoria Ford on "Elegy for Clitoris"

The poet and essayist Victoria Newton Ford joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss her poem "Elegy for Clitoris" from Connotation Press. Victoria has said that she writes "to tell the truth, and the truth is often hideous. And though it feels good to write, I don't write to make the reader feel good, particularly. I write to make you feel. To honor my own feeling, which is another way to honor the fact that I exist. And so, it is my duty to witness and speak while I'm here."

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Episode 9: Jess Bergman on "The Difficult Business of Dying"

Jess Bergman (@jesslbergman), Features Editor at Literary Hub, joins Jamie-Lee, Maya, and Sabrina to discuss her essay "The Difficult Business of Dying" from The New Republic in December 2017. In the essay, Jess weaves together her own experience of mourning her father with Caitlin Doughty's book From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death, which examines the funeral industry in the United States as well as mourning rituals across cultures.