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Kristen Millares Young, writer and journalist, shows us her writing process behind her first memoir, Desire Lines. Desire Lines is a forensic investigation into the emotional topography of being a woman, a writer and a mother. She traced her matrilineage from Cuba to Spain, and uncovered the remnants of a pagan cult whose mother goddess, Cybele, was erased to make way for the Virgin Mary. In this conversation, we get to learn how her experience as a journalist helped her write this fantastic memoir.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Cold open

00:51 Welcome, Kristen Millares Young

01:42 Cybele and her lions: how Rome tamed a goddess

05:04 Why Desire Lines had to be memoir, not fiction

08:01 Going into the dark: roots, soil, and joy

11:46 Where to draw the line: ”the personal is structural”

15:12 How journalism shaped her writing

16:38 The collapse of book criticism and how authors can shape the conversation

20:12 Memoir vs. the novel, and what she's writing next

23:16 Who Desire Lines is for

26:11 Bringing the book to universities and students

29:26 Teaching craft: the hardest thing left unsaid

32:05 The Odyssey and the moral latitude we give male characters

37:18 Where to find Kristen

KEYWORDS

Kristen Millares Young, Desire Lines, Desire Lines memoir, Subduction novel, Red Hen Press, Red Hen Radio, Kate Gale, feminist memoir, creative nonfiction, Cybele goddess, Phrygian goddess, pagan goddess worship, goddess history, women's power, matrilineal storytelling, women's stories, memoir writing, writing memoir vs fiction, personal essay, Sara Ahmed, the personal is structural, Ursula K. Le Guin, Steering the Craft, Kahlil Gibran, Joy Harjo, journalist turned author, book criticism, literary criticism decline, book promotion, author book tour, Latina authors, women's studies, generative writing, writing prompts, Port Townsend Writers Conference, Hugo House, craft lectures, The Odyssey movie, Odysseus, male antiheroes, unlikable women characters, patriarchy in literature, midlife women, women writers, literary podcast, author interview