Welcome Readers and Writers!

 

 

Books

Edgewalker (Memoir)

An intimate and honest memoir, Edgewalker is the story of three simultaneous events that transformed a woman who was desperate for change into a person who could find peace in that which she couldn’t change.

At forty-nine, Pamm Smith thought the lucky life she lived had vanished. In the wake of her mother’s diagnosis of ovarian cancer, she learned that she too had a tumor, just as her marriage of a decade upended. In the year that ensued, she watched her mother navigate the end of life, became engulfed in the confusing medical system, and let go of her conflicted relationship with her husband. Although not the changes she had hoped for, the collusion of events lead her to consider the most important questions of her life: How to balance fear of the unknown with faith that everything is exactly as it’s meant to be; and when to try harder and when to let go.

Told with candor and truth, Edgewalker vividly captures the tears and joys of one woman forging ahead on a journey that angered, strengthened, and ultimately healed her. It is a story of finding clarity in a new normal. It is a story of discovering a new “happy place.”

Readings, Classes & Lectures

 

Teaching Artist.  2021.  “Writing for Wellness.”  Virtual event for the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance’s Living Well:  Lunch and Learn Series.  Minneapolis, Minnesota.  March 24.

Reader.  2020.  “Memoir Writing Project Reading.”  Virtual Event with reading from Edgewalker.  Saint Paul, Minnesota.  June 24.

Teaching Artist.  2020. “Writing for Healing:  Exploring Our Cancer Stories.”  Video recording on writing for healing, with reading from Edgewalker.  Created for Gilda’s Club, Minneapolis.   Artist funding from The Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board.  Minneapolis, Minnesota.  June 2.  (Live event replaced with video due to COVID.  See video below.) (*) 

Teaching Artist.  2020.  “Living Well:  Survivor Brunch and Arts Workshop.” Event with program on Writing for Healing and reading from Edgewalker.  Sponsored by the Minnesota Ovarian Cancer Alliance.  Artist funding from The Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board.  Como Conservatory.  Saint Paul, Minnesota.  March 7. (*)

Co-organizer and Reader.  2019.  “Women’s Voices Memoir Reading.”  Event with reading from Edgewalker.   Artist funding from The Minnesota Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board.  Northeast Library, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  November 30. (*)

Reader.  2019.  “Memoir Writing Project Reading.”  Event with reading from Edgewalker.  Sponsored by The Loft Literary Center and hosted by teaching artist Nicole Helget.  Loft Literary Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota.  January 15.

 

Acknowledgement:  * Select events above were made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.

Videos

 

“Writing for Healing: Exploring Our Cancer Stories” (June 2020)

Books, Classes and Writing Communities

 

Cancer (or Illness) Memoirs:

• Caldwell, Gail.  2010.  Let’s Take the Long Way Home:  A Memoir of Friendship.  New York, NY:  Random House, Inc.
• Didion, Joan.  2011.  Blue Nights.  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.
• Didion, Joan.  2005.  A Year of Magical Thinking.  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.
• Goldberg, Natalie.  2018.  Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home.  Boulder, Colorado:  Shambhala Publications, Inc.
• Gawande, Atul.  2014.  Begin Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters in the End.  New York, NY:  Picador.
• Gubar, Susan.  2012.  Memoir of a Debulked Woman:  Enduring Ovarian Cancer.  New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
• Kalanithi, Paul.  2016.  When Breath Becomes Air.  New York, NY:  Corcovado, Inc.
• Maynard, Joyce. 2017.  The Best of Us.  New York, NY:  Bloomsbury.
• Munster, Pamela.  2018. Twisting Fate:  My Journey with BRCA-From Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back.  New York, NY:  The Experiment, LLC.
• Radner, Gilda.  1989. It’s Always Something.  New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
• Scheel, Camille.  2015.  Camp Chemo:  Postcards Home from Metastatic Breast Cancer.  Edina, MN:  Beaver’s Pond Press.

Writing for Healing Guides:

• DeSalvo, Louise.  1999.  Writing as a Way of Healing:  How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.  Boston, MA:  Beacon Press.
• Gubar, Susan.  2016.  Reading and Writing Cancer.  New York, NY:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Writing as a Spiritual or Creative Practice:

• Andrew, Elizabeth Jarrett.  2018.  Living Revision:  A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Skinner House Books.
• Andrew, Elizabeth Jarrett.  2005.  Writing the Sacred Journey:  The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir.  Boston, MA:  Skinner House Books.
• Gilbert, Elizabeth.  2015.  Big Magic:  Creative Living Beyond Fear.   New York, NY:  Riverhead Books.

Writing Craft Books:

• Dillard, Annie.  Teaching a Stone to Talk.  New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.
• Dillard, Annie.  1989.  The Writing Life.  HarperCollins Publishers.
• Cameron, Julia.  1998.  The Write to Write:  An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life.  New York, NY:  Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
• Franklin, Jon.  1986.  Writing for Story.  New York, NY:  Plume.
• Goldberg, Natalie.  1986.  Writing Down the Bones:  Freeing the Writer Within.  Boston, MA:  Shambhala.
• Karr, Mary.  2015.  The Art of Memoir.  New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.
• King, Stephen.  2000.  On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft.  New York, NY:  Scribner.
• Lamott, Anne.  1994.  Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York, NY: 
• Pantheon Books.
• Myers, Linda Joy.  2010.  The Power of Memoir:  How to Write Your Healing Story.  San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass.
• Silverman, Sue William.  2009.  Fearless Confessions:  A Writer’s Guide to Memoir.  Athens, Georgia:  The University of Georgia Press.

Other Favorite Memoirs:

• Deraniyagala, Sonali.  2013.  Wave.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf. (Video on motivation for writing.)
• Karr, Mary.  2009.  Lit.  New York, NY:  Harper-Collins Publishers. 
• Kaysen, Susanna.  1993.  Girl, Interrupted.  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.
• McCracken, Elizabeth.  2008.  An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination.  New York, NY:  Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company.
• Patchett, Ann.  2004.  Truth and Beauty:  A Friendship.  New York, NY:  Harper-Collins Publishers.
• Shapiro, Dani.  2019.  Inheritance:  A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf.
• Strayed, Cheryl.  2012.  Wild:  From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf.
• Westover, Tara.  2018.  Educated.  New York, NY:  Random House.

Favorite Memoirs by Minnesota Authors:

• Flynn, Laura.  2008.  Swallow the Ocean.  Berkeley, CA:  Counterpoint.
• Helget, Nicole Lea.  2005.  The Summer of Ordinary Ways.  Saint Paul, MN:  Borealis Books. 
• Liautaud, Judy.  2013.  Sunlight on my Shadow:  A Birthmother’s Journey from Secrecy to Renewal.  Minneapolis, MN:  City Creek Press.

Writing Classes and Communities:

• The Loft Literary Center – Offers a wide variety of writing classes including classes on writing for healing.
• Wisdom Ways –  Offers a wide variety of classes including a monthly session called “Writing the Sacred Journey” with Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew.
• Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew – Offers writing courses and events around writing spiritual memoir.
• Karen Hering – Offers writing courses and events, including monthly writing sessions called Open Pages.

Pamm Smith is a writer, teacher and researcher.  She was awarded the Artist Initiative Grant (2019) and Creative Support for Individuals Grant (2021 and 2022) from The Minnesota State Arts Board.  She is the author of a variety of works of creative non-fiction.  She is currently seeking representation for her memoir entitled Edgewalker.  Edgewalker is an exploration of a year in which the author experienced the death of her mother, loss of her marriage, and her own cancer diagnosis.  Smith is on the faculty at the University of Minnesota, and author of the academic book Global Trade Policy, and other journal articles.  She is an ovarian cancer and lupus survivor; and has an interest in the topic of writing for wellness.