Diane Fraser had a remarkable niece, predicted to die in her first week of life who lived through 40 surgeries and more brushes with death but also through wild adventures, seductions and transformations, for almost three decades. Eulogizing this heroic young person lead Diane to write Growing Up Superheros, a memoir. In our conversation we talk about researching a personal story, including use of interviews and journaling, looking for common themes to focus the book, grappling with the boundaries between truth and imagined detail, and respecting the privacy of the other “characters” in the book. We also dig into magical realism and omniscient narration in a memoir, the entrepreneurial aspects of being a self published writer, and representations of disabled folks in romantic relationships. Tips on crowdfunding, sustaining a writing group, collaborating with an illustrator and more.

Link

http://Growingupsuperheroes.com

Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown

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Diane Fraser

Diane Fraser

Diane Fraser is a writer who lives in a world where symbols, archetypes, and spirits are alive and communicate with her directly. Diane won several poetry prizes in college at UMass Boston, where she got her B.A. in English with Honors in Creative Writing. As an undergrad, she was a Stadler Semester for Young Poets fellow at Bucknell University. After college, she was a founding member of a small writing group, Erograph, who wrote together for 12 years, and did readings in Boston and Pennsylvania. Previous publishing includes poems published years ago in the Boston Phoenix, Arts Media, and small press literary journals.

To further her mystical experience and self-mastery Diane studied with three teachers in the shamanic and hermetic arts. As part of her personal work she teaches informally, helps people with their lives through energy work, tarot, and insight, and publishes a blog. While working full time on national behavioral health projects, Diane has developed her scientific knowledge on addiction, recovery, and mental health. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts. This is her first book.

Diane is available to meet with your book group when they read Growing Up Superheroes, either in person in the Greater Boston area, or via Skype. “Thank you so much for joining us at our book group meeting last night. It was really wonderful to meet the author behind this book we all loved so much and to learn about your writing process and more about Deihlia. We all loved the discussion and had a great time getting to know you.” -AS

Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.

The hosts:

Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.

Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.