Debbie Weil speaks with Anne Fadiman, a brilliant author and beloved writing teacher, about the writing process and how we should all be a witness to history, as writers, during this unprecedented time of a pandemic.
Debbie has a conversation about writing with friend and college classmate Anne Fadiman. Anne is an illustrious - and revered - essayist and author, perhaps best known for her first book, the prize-winning The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down, an account of the unbridgeable cultural conflicts between a family of Hmong refugees and their American doctors. She’s spent her whole career as a reporter and editor and for the past 15 years as an award-winning teacher of nonfiction writing at Yale University. She’s a writer’s writer and Debbie couldn’t be more excited to have her on the show.
They talk about writing in the context of the pandemic we are living through. Should we all be writing about our daily lives right now as witnesses to history? Her answer is "Yes, keep a journal," just as Anne Frank did during World War II when she hid from the Nazis with her family in Amsterdam.
They talk about the intimacy of Anne's work as a writing teacher at Yale, how she and her students nonetheless jumped into Zoom classes, and how proud she is of her students, a number of whom have gone on to become well-known writers. They discuss the therapeutic benefits of writing, what it really means to take risks and to become a better writer, and the importance of reading.
She also reminisces about being confined to bed, at home, for eight months during a difficult pregnancy and how that was more difficult than sheltering in place during the pandemic. That's when she started writing essays.
Mentioned in the episode:
Two of Anne Fadiman's books:
Pandemic-related reporting by two of her students:
Photo of Anne Fadiman by Gabriel Amadeus Cooney
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