Women Lit UNBOUND: What Happens When a Woman Tells Her Whole Truth w/Gina Frangello, Brooke Warner

What Happens When a Woman Tells Her Whole Truth: The Freedom and Fallout of Memoir Check http://www.baybookfest.org/unbound for additional episodes and information on our Bay Area Book Festival #UNBOUND virtual series. Gina Frangello’s new memoir, Blow Your House Down, has been met with wide acclaim, impassioned support, and also the kind of judgments and criticisms that people love to lob at women who write about their authentic, messy lives. Frangello’s book is honest to a fault. She dares to write about her desires, her indiscretions, her fantasies, her deep flaws. She’s unflinching, definitely imperfect, not a good girl and seemingly unconcerned with being read as “nice” or “sympathetic.“ She doesn’t fit into other people’s boxes of what a good wife or mother should look like. She writes about adultery, a longtime affair, and eventually breaking up her family, with repercussions to all concerned, including her children. For readers, the experience of reading Blow your House Down is a paradox. You want to look and you want to turn away. You relate to every word and you want to distance yourself from that truth. You will question the author. You will question yourself. You will finish feeling unsettled, mulling over your own life choices. For memoirists and aspiring memoirists, this book raises the bar, perhaps uncomfortably, around expectations for how much you’re “supposed” to say, or allowed to tell. At the center of this conversation, moderated by Brooke Warner of She Writes Press, are questions about how women are encouraged to be silent, or get silenced; the double standards that run rampant throughout the world of book publishing, but especially between male and female writers of memoir; and the very real fallout for women writers who dare to tell the truth on the page. Nothing will be off-limits. Writers and readers of memoir won’t want to miss this conversation between Gina Frangello, an author who’s broken the mold and dared to show everything, and Brooke Warner, a memoir advocate who believes that women telling their stories in all their messy glory is how we create a more expansive culture for women’s full range of experience and expression. Sponsored by She Writes Press Get the books: http://www.baybookfest.org/bookstores� �� Enjoyed this program? All live festivals have been impacted by these hard times and the Bay Area Book Festival is no exception. If you enjoyed this programming, please consider leaving us a tip to help cover production costs: https://www.baybookfest.org/donate_eoy20/

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