Memoir as Advocacy: Now It's Personal

Skirvin Hotel, Balinese Room
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Mindy Uhrlaub will discuss how long-time playwrights and novelists can come into their own as
powerful activists when they write memoirs. She will explain the difference between activism
and advocacy, and how authors effectively demand justice when they are at their most
vulnerable. Uhrlaub will also discuss what is fair to share when writing deeply personal narrative
and how we become the goal-oriented protagonist in our story, especially when we tell the
painful truth. Playwright V (Eve Ensler) did this when, after many years of writing plays about
women’s bodies, published a memoir, The Apology, about her father who sexually abused her.
Her demand for a posthumous apology from her dad got the attention of women’s rights activists around the world. Amy Bloom, a long-time novelist, switched genres and published In Love, a caregiver’s memoir about assisted suicide for her husband, who had Alzheimer’s disease. Many now see her as a powerful advocate for Medical Aid in Dying laws. Mindy has also used her platform as a human rights novelist to become a medical advocate as a carrier of a gene that causes ALS, in her recent book, Last Nerve. She will share excerpts from some of her favorite
novelists-turned-memoir-advocates, and prove that if writing is your superpower, memoir can be a way to get the justice you seek.