Rayya Elias's guest appearances

Rayya Elias

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Adelaide Writers' Week 2014

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Arianna Huffington

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Arlie Hochschild

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Michael Pollan

Rob Bell

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Jordan Bach

David Chang

Elizabeth Gilbert

Dani Shapiro

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Rayya Elias is the author of the incredible memoir, Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side. She's a musician, filmmaker, hair artist, and all around awe-inspiring human being. She talks to the girls about scaring off ghosts, her relationship with her best friend, Elizabeth Gilbert, emotional sobriety, living on the streets, forgiveness, what recovery looks like for her now and the NFL. Learn more about her at: www.rayyaelias.com. Music by Radiation City.

Rayya Elias is the author of the incredible memoir, Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side. She's a musician, filmmaker, hair artist, and all around awe-inspiring human being. She talks to the girls about scaring off ghosts, her relationship with her best friend, Elizabeth Gilbert, emotional sobriety, living on the streets, forgiveness, what recovery looks like for her now and the NFL. Learn more about her at: <a href="http://www.rayyaelias.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">www.rayyaelias.com</a>. Music by Radiation City.

Episode 32: Rayya Elias

Born in Syria, moving to Detroit as a child, and running away to New York in her twenties to become a rock star: Rayya Elias built up a lifetime of stories by the time she was 25, and a few more in the decades after.Her brash, brutal memoir Harley Loco – probably the only book you’ll read this year titled after the author’s prison nickname – doesn’t stop there. Elias’s book stomps through a lifetime’s worth of self-discovery: identity in migrant communities, an addiction story with a happy ending, and how to support yourself as an amateur hairdresser in the old, dirty anddangerous NYC. She’ll be joined by her friend Elizabeth Gilbert, who encouraged Elias to tell her story. Rayya Elias is a hair stylist, filmmaker, musician and most recently, author. Her first book is Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side.Elizabeth Gilbert is an author and journalist, best known for her international bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Time Magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She went on to write two other books, Committed and The Signature of All Things, which also became widely acclaimed bestsellers. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Born in Syria, moving to Detroit as a child, and running away to New York in her twenties to become a rock star: Rayya Elias built up a lifetime of stories by the time she was 25, and a few more in the decades after.Her brash, brutal memoir Harley Loco – probably the only book you’ll read this year titled after the author’s prison nickname – doesn’t stop there. Elias’s book stomps through a lifetime’s worth of self-discovery: identity in migrant communities, an addiction story with a happy ending, and how to support yourself as an amateur hairdresser in the old, dirty anddangerous NYC. She’ll be joined by her friend Elizabeth Gilbert, who encouraged Elias to tell her story. Rayya Elias is a hair stylist, filmmaker, musician and most recently, author. Her first book is Harley Loco: A Memoir of Hard Living, Hair, and Post Punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side.Elizabeth Gilbert is an author and journalist, best known for her international bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, which has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Time Magazine named her as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She went on to write two other books, Committed and The Signature of All Things, which also became widely acclaimed bestsellers. Hosted on Acast. See <a href="https://acast.com/privacy" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank">acast.com/privacy</a> for more information.

Rayya Elias & Elizabeth Gilbert: 'Sex, Drugs & Hair' (All About Women 2015)

Subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes   photo: Lisa Ross In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, Rayya Elias tells us about Harley Loco and a life of “hard living, hair, and post-punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side.” We start with Elias’s childhood in Syria, then growing up in Detroit in the late 1960s and ’70s when her family came to the United States, and the desires that led her towards New York City. She talked about how she turned to drug use as a way push aside the internal conflicts she was dealing with over her sexuality and her efforts to break away from her past. The drugs, she says, “unlocked me a little bit, helped me move past all of those barriers that I felt contained me. That was my first experience, and it was amazing. Not only was I able to fit in, but I was also able to be comfortable in my own skin, and able to just be freer.” It didn’t stop there:  “When the harder drugs started happening… here in New York, in the art scene, in the music scene, and I was looking up to see who were the people I was mostly attracted to in my life, they were the people that were out there using drugs and still having these lives that were beyond my imagination…They were doing it, and they seemed f’ed up… and [yet] they seemed to be doing a really job at being everything. And I thought, wow, I can do that!”  She couldn’t, though, and she writes about the long downward spiral that followed, and the slow process of turning her life around. We also talk about how she’d originally set out to turn her story into a movie, when the encouragement and generosity of Elizabeth Gilbert steered her towards memoir. Listen to Life Stories #75: Rayya Elias (MP3 file); or download this file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). Or subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released. (And if you are an iTunes subscriber, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast!)

<h5><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/life-stories/id650168716" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes</a></h5> <a href="http://www.beatrice.com/life-stories/LifeStoriesRayyaElias.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank"> </a> photo: Lisa Ross In this episode of Life Stories, the podcast where I interview memoir writers about their lives and the art of writing memoir, <a href="http://rayyaelias.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Rayya Elias</a> tells us about <a href="http://www.powells.com/partner/29017/biblio/9780143125051" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Harley Loco</a> and a life of “hard living, hair, and post-punk, from the Middle East to the Lower East Side.” We start with Elias’s childhood in Syria, then growing up in Detroit in the late 1960s and ’70s when her family came to the United States, and the desires that led her towards New York City. She talked about how she turned to drug use as a way push aside the internal conflicts she was dealing with over her sexuality and her efforts to break away from her past. The drugs, she says, “unlocked me a little bit, helped me move past all of those barriers that I felt contained me. That was my first experience, and it was amazing. Not only was I able to fit in, but I was also able to be comfortable in my own skin, and able to just be freer.” It didn’t stop there: <blockquote> “When the harder drugs started happening… here in New York, in the art scene, in the music scene, and I was looking up to see who were the people I was mostly attracted to in my life, they were the people that were out there using drugs and still having these lives that were beyond my imagination…They were doing it, and they seemed f’ed up… and [yet] they seemed to be doing a really job at being everything. And I thought, wow, I can do that!” </blockquote> She couldn’t, though, and she writes about the long downward spiral that followed, and the slow process of turning her life around. We also talk about how she’d originally set out to turn her story into a movie, when the encouragement and generosity of Elizabeth Gilbert steered her towards memoir. Listen to <a href="http://www.beatrice.com/life-stories/LifeStoriesRayyaElias.mp3" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Life Stories #75: Rayya Elias</a> (MP3 file); or download this file by right-clicking (Mac users, option-click). Or <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/life-stories/id650168716" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">subscribe to Life Stories in iTunes</a>, where you can catch up with earlier episodes and be alerted whenever a new one is released. (And if you are an iTunes subscriber, please consider rating and reviewing the podcast!)

Life Stories #75: Rayya Elias