Tuesday May 24, 2022

Memoir Backlash with Yasmin Azad, Esther Amini, & Megan Culhane Galbraith

Welcome to the Indie Writer Podcast where we talk about all things writing and indie publishing. Today we are excited to talk about Memoir Backlash Yasmin Azad, Esther Amini, & Megan Culhane Galbraith.

Yasmin Azad who was born and raised in Ceylon, (now called Sri Lanka), was among the first group of girls in her Muslim community to go away from home to pursue a university degree. In her twenties, after a brief stint as a lecturer, she married and moved to the United States. Living mostly in the Boston area, she raised her children and worked for over two decades as a mental health counselor. Her memoir Stay, Daughter, draws on her experiences growing up in a warm and close-knit but conservative society which at first resisted the education and independence of women but had, eventually, to embrace modernity. It is also informed by an understanding derived from her work as a counselor in the West, that the breakdown of traditional family values and structures comes with its own challenges, especially for women. She is currently working on a novel which explores the issues of family and belonging.

Esther Amini is a writer, painter, and psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. Her debut memoir is entitled Concealed: Memoir of a Jewish-Iranian Daughter Caught Between the Chador and America. Her short stories have appeared in Elle, Lilith, Tablet, The Jewish Week, Barnard Magazine, TK University’s Inscape Literary, Proximity, Paper Brigade, and Medium.com. Her essays can also be found in Zibby Owens’ Anthologies Moms Don’t Have Time To and Moms Don’t Have Time To Have Kids.

Esther Amini was named one of Aspen Words’ best emerging memoirists and awarded its Emerging Writer Fellowship in 2016. Seven of her pieces have been performed by Jewish Women’s Theatre, (a.k.a. The Braid), in Los Angeles and in Manhattan, and she was chosen by Jewish Women’s Theatre as their Artist-in-Residence in 2019. ChaiFlicks, (Jewish Netflix), is presently streaming an excerpt from Concealed called AM-REE-KAH.

Megan Culhane Galbraith is a writer and visual artist. Her work was a Notable Mention in Best American Essays 2017, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and has been published in Tupelo Quarterly, Redivider, Catapult, Hobart, Longreads, and Hotel Amerika, among others. She is Associate Director of the Bennington Writing Seminars and the founding director of the Governor's Institutes of Vermont Young Writers Institute. Her debut hybrid memoir-in-essays, The Guild of the Infant Saviour was published by Mad Creek Books/Ohio State University Press in May 2021.