{"id":1228,"date":"2015-07-15T10:59:47","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T10:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/?p=1228"},"modified":"2017-07-01T13:06:19","modified_gmt":"2017-07-01T13:06:19","slug":"leslie-jamison-a-cheat-sheet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/leslie-jamison-a-cheat-sheet\/","title":{"rendered":"Leslie Jamison: A cheat sheet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>1. She started to write essays as a way of taking a break from a novel about Nicaragua that wasn\u2019t working out.<\/p>\n<p>2. She writes <a href=\"http:\/\/www.publishersweekly.com\/pw\/by-topic\/industry-news\/tip-sheet\/article\/61591-how-to-write-a-personal-essay.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">moving stories<\/a>: \u201c<em>[About] deeply personal experiences (getting hit in the face, getting an abortion) but I also write about reality television and Bolivian silver mines and the history of artificial sweeteners. (&#8230;) I often think of the subject of an essay as something like a courtyard full of questions\u2014questions about grief, or longing, or memory, or empathy. Writing means walking a furious labyrinthine path in order to peer at them from every possible direction\u201d.<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n3. Start by reading the title essay of the collection, <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.believermag.com\/issues\/201402\/?read=article_jamison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Empathy Exams<\/a><\/em>, in which she says \u201c<em>Empathy isn\u2019t just something that happens to us \u2013 a meteor shower of synapses firing across the brain \u2013 it\u2019s also a choice we make: to pay attention, to extend ourselves.\u201d<br \/>\n<\/em><br \/>\n4. She has the phrase \u201cI am human: nothing human is alien to me\u201d tattooed on her arm. It\u2019s a quote from Roman playwright Terence, and she got it to break with the past. <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/04\/13\/opinion\/sunday\/mark-my-words-maybe.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Not everyone saw it that way<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Tat.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\" size-medium wp-image-1253 aligncenter\" src=\"http:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Tat-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"Tat\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Tat-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Tat-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/07\/Tat.jpg 1000w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>5. She talks very persuasively about the movie <em><a href=\"http:\/\/therumpus.net\/2014\/11\/the-sunday-rumpus-interview-leslie-jamison\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Frozen<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>6. She has been studying narratives of addiction and recovery, and writing her dissertation about them.<\/p>\n<p>7. She listened to many people\u2019s personal confessions as she toured to promote her book \u2013 she wrote about what she learned, and why she still believes confessional writing is important <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/books\/2014\/jul\/05\/leslie-jamison-empathy-exams-confessional-writing-not-self-indulgent\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">in The Guardian<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>8. She wrote an <a href=\"http:\/\/www.believermag.com\/issues\/201105\/?read=article_jamison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">amazing story<\/a> about one of the craziest races in the world, 160 km through the hills of Tennessee, an almost 60 hour run that only 16 people have finished in its 30-year history.<\/p>\n<p>9. She tried to answer the question <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/03\/16\/books\/review\/is-it-harder-to-write-about-happiness-than-its-opposite.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u201cIs it Harder to Write about Happiness Than Its Opposite?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Apparently, \u201ehappiness threatens the things that every writing workshop demands: suspense, conflict, desire.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>10. She <a href=\"http:\/\/arts.columbia.edu\/writing\/news\/2015\/jamison-joins-faculty\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">joined <\/a>the faculty of the Columbia University\u2019s School of the Arts writing program as a full time assistant professor this summer.<\/p>\n<p>11. She gave a wonderful interview about her work to the awesome crew at <a href=\"http:\/\/longform.org\/posts\/longform-podcast-92-leslie-jamison\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Longform<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>12. Her book is currently being translated into Romanian as part of a collaboration between DoR, Editura Publica, and NN, one of our conference supporters. It\u2019ll come out this September, and will be available in bookstores and at the conference.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/registration\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">\u00a0Book your place<\/a> for the 5th edition\u00a0of The Power of Storytelling to meet Leslie\u00a0and learn more about her work<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>1. She started to write essays as a way of taking a break from a novel about Nicaragua that wasn\u2019t working out. 2. She writes moving stories: \u201c[About] deeply personal experiences (getting hit in the face, getting an abortion) but I also write about reality television and Bolivian silver mines and the history of artificial &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/leslie-jamison-a-cheat-sheet\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Leslie Jamison: A cheat sheet<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":1260,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[38,60],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1228"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3005,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1228\/revisions\/3005"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1260"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepowerofstorytelling.org\/edition-2018\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}