Mieke Eerkens's guest appearances

Mieke Eerkens

The Writing University Podcast

Elizabeth McCracken

Lauren Haldeman

Dora Malech

Mark Leidner

Emily Pettit

Mary Allen

Eric Goodman

Sandra Scofield

David Hamilton

Michael Morse

Anjali Sachdeva

Katie Ford

Elizabeth Robinson

Jessica Handler

Bianca Stone

OwlTail

The most intimate, powerful, and fraught relationships in our lives are often with the limited inner circle we call family. For that reason, those relationships often feature heavily in our writing. However, to write about family relationships means putting its players on a public stage, and this can bring a whole set of unique issues, both practical and emotional. In this lecture and discussion, specific difficulties a writer faces in writing about family members will be addressed, including concerns about ethical treatment of your subjects, family responses to publication, the writer’s fear of repercussions, discrepancies in memory, and research challenges.

Episode 117: Writing About Family in Nonfiction - Mieke Eerkens
		

During workshops, it often becomes clear how heavily the “feminine” voice—characterized by multi-angled, expansive prose and a focus on the emotional realm—is criticized in writing, and the “masculine” voice—characterized by straightforward, sparse prose and a focus on the physical realm—is pushed. Editors and the work they publish reinforce this aesthetic preference, which affects our culture in a feedback loop. Yet, male, female, and gender-neutral writers alike reflect varying degrees of traditional masculinity or femininity in their authorial voices. We will interrogate the assumptions about the masculine voice versus the feminine voice, and discuss how it relates to our writing.

Episode 109: On the Feminine vs. the Masculine Narrative Voice - Mieke Eerkens
