Performed by Val Cole

Get to know the writer:

*1. What is your short story about? *

A biomythography of a childhood experience: a difficult, traumatic memory,
and a healing that took many years. I describe the experience of growing up
with a mother who had mental health disorders, raising five children on her
own.

*2. What genres would you say this story is in? *

My story is a biomythography. Biomythography is a genre created by Black
lesbian author and poet Audrey Lorde in her 1982 book, *Zami: A New
Spelling of My Name. *She wrote that this genre enables us to use our
experiences to compose what identity means to us, and that we can use
emotions, along with imagery and perception, to express our truths.

*Biomythography – weaving together myth, history, and biography
in epic narrative form, a style of composition that represents all the ways
in which we perceive the truth. Biomythography is a writing down of our
meanings of identity... with the materials of our lives. We are the
culmination of it all; experiences are painted with imagery, perception,
and, mostly, emotion. Details that become true in the telling.*

*3. How would you describe this story in two words? *

Tragic, hopeful

*4. What movie have you seen the most in your life? *

Honestly, I don't have an answer.

*5. What is your favorite song? (Or, what song have you listened to the
most times in your life?) *

*Cats in the Cradle* by Harry Chapin comes to mind.

*6. Do you have an all-time favorite novel? *

*Aunt Sookie and Me* by Michael Scott Garvin comes to mind.

*7. What motivated you to write this story? *

The need to heal, the need to remove the deep pain within me, and give it
another place to exist. To put the pain somewhere else to live instead of
within me.

*8. If you could have dinner with one person (dead or alive), who would
that be?*

Oprah Winfrey, I have so many questions for her.

*9. Apart from writing, what else are you passionate about? *

The love of my life and the life we created together.

*10. What influenced you to enter your story to get performed? *

I needed to know whether it was worth sharing, whether others could relate
to and benefit from my experience. To let others know that there is hope.
And if my story got picked up for performance, that would answer my
question.

*11. Any advice or tips you'd like to pass on to other writers?*

Write what you feel. Write what's deep inside you. Write what is most
uncomfortable. Let it live in writing. "Your body is not a coffin for pain
to be buried in." (Ehime Ora). Write biomythographically.