15 Jan My Body, My Life:
Writing Around and Through Roe
Hosted by Brooke Warner
In this timely session, moderator Brooke Warner will facilitate a conversation with three authors at the heart of the recent anthology, Aftermath: Life in Post-Roe America. Amy Ferris, Rob Galvin, and the anthology’s editor, Elizabeth Hines, will share both the motivations and the specific urgency writers feel when tackling sensitive and important subjects. This panel will address how we write about our bodies, and why and how writing about our corporeal experiences effects change and saves lives, especially in moments when our freedoms are being stripped away from us.
Brooke Warner (moderator) is publisher of She Writes Press and SparkPress, president of Warner Coaching Inc., and author of the books Write On, Sisters!, Green-light Your Book, What’s Your Book?, and three books on memoir. Brooke is a TEDx speaker, weekly podcaster (of Write-minded, with co-host Grant Faulkner of NaNoWriMo), and the former Executive Editor of Seal Press. She writes a regular column for Publishers Weekly.
Amy Ferris is an author, a writer, a screenwriter, an editor, and a playwright. Her memoir, Marrying George Clooney, Confessions From a Midlife Crisis was adapted into an Off-Broadway play in 2012. Her screenplay for Funny Valentines (Director, Julie Dash – BET/STARZ) was nominated for a Best Adapted Screenplay Award. She has written three books, one YA novel, and contributed to numerous anthologies. She curated and edited the anthology Shades of Blue. She co-authored, with Rev Run (from RunDMC) the memoir, Old School Love for HarperCollins. Amy serves on the Advisory Board of the Women’s Media Center (co-founded by Gloria Steinem, Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan). She co-founded The Milford Readers & Writers Festival and she’s on faculty at The Kauai Writer’s Conference. In 2020 Amy was named one of Women’s eNews: 21 Leaders for the 21st Century and in 2022 was recognized and awarded for being one of The 12 Women Who Changed the World by NextTribe. Her new memoir, Mighty Gorgeous – A Little Book About Messy Love, is on the SheWritesPress Fall 2023 publishing list.
Rob Galvin is a writer and merchant mariner, born and raised in Bayonne, New Jersey. The proud father of Tommy and Riley, and husband to Kagin Galvin. Rob has also been a vocal union member during his career. He is an ally for the LGBTQIA+ community, as well as an outspoken advocate for women’s equality and BLM. Currently based in Dingmans Ferry, PA, he spends his time writing in the mountains, when he is not away at sea.
Elizabeth G. Hines is an author and editor whose work has appeared in numerous online publications. Along with her mother, Carol Jenkins, she is the co-author of the best-selling biography, Black Titan: A. G. Gaston and the Making of a Black American Millionaire, winner of a 2004 Non-Fiction Book Honor from the American Library Association. In 2022, Hines served as editor of the reproductive justice anthology Aftermath: Life in Post-Roe America, a collection of more than 35 feminist voices exploring the end of Roe v. Wade and the impact this loss of reproductive freedom will have on American society as a whole. Hines holds a BA from Yale College and conducted her graduate studies at Harvard University. She lives in New York City with her family.
Get a Full Festival pass and you’ll get to take in the Story Slam on Thursday night. Then sail into the weekend: attending all the wonderful panels, both Little Bites and Big Libations Cocktail Parties, and both evening events. And share the bounty from our always-stuffed goody bag.