Author Archive | Kevin Johannen

icon_new

Riding out the Vortex at Ragdale

by Judy Carmack Bross As the polar vortex whirled over the arts and crafts estate buried deep in the woods outside Lake Forest, a group of almost-strangers raised their wine glasses in the flickering candlelight, not knowing what the dark and stormy night would bring. (more…)

Continue Reading

Memoir & Psychotherapy: The Writing Cure and The Talking Cure

Hot Topics in Creative Nonfiction: Memoir & Psychotherapy: The Writing Cure and The Talking Cure. Presented by Leanna James Blackwell, director, Bay Path University’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction, in conversation with writer and psychotherapist Patricia Reis. https://youtu.be/VjkOAtIftJA

Continue Reading

Psychotherapy and Memoir

The Talking Cure and the Writing Cure Without wishing to sound freakish or weird, I liken my vocation—writer and psychotherapist—to conjoined twins. Born in my midlife, they developed from the same fertilized egg, gestated in the same amniotic fluid, were nourished by the same placenta. They share the same interests, the same reading lists, and, […]

Continue Reading

The Lightning Notes – Interview: Patricia Reis

Life is striking. Take note. Interview: Patricia Reis Patricia Reis is a woman who believes “nothing’s wasted.” She’s also a psychotherapist and an author who just came out with a memoir. Here, she discusses her antidote to cynicism and fear, having no regrets, and veering off the conventional course. How do you describe yourself? How […]

Continue Reading

Interview in “Next Act for Women”

After several failed marriages, Patricia went back to school in midlife and became a psychotherapist. It would take a lengthy correspondence with her aunt, a Franciscan nun living in Central America, to coax Patricia into writing her memoir, Motherlines. Tell us a little about your background… I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and entered the […]

Continue Reading
Patty in Costa Rica, 1965

Love Letters in Women Writers, Women’s Books

The first letter I ever wrote to my maternal aunt Ruth, was in 1965. I don’t remember what possessed me to write to her. The risk was great and the reach was far. The letter was no doubt desperate, confessing my troubles to someone who was related, but whom I barely knew, someone I had […]

Continue Reading

Undertaking Memoir

“It helps if they are dead,” say many memoirists when asked about including family members in their work. Clearly, memoir is an undertaker’s profession: how to present the person so they look as natural as they did in life? Consider, for example, preparing the late Mickey Easterling, the infamous Grande Dame of New Orleans, for […]

Continue Reading

site by: iKnow