Hello all. This is the first of what will be a long-term series of interviews with memoir authors who turned their stories into activism.
As you might know, I co-authored a book, Make a Difference with Mental Health Activism, with my friend Dr. Terri Lyon. Activism is important to me. Many of the memoir authors I have coached or edited have aspirations to make social change happen through their memoirs. David Pruitt is one such author. He and I talked recently for the first of this new series, Memoir as Activism. Here's what he had to say.
Trish: Hi, David. First, let me congratulate you on your brilliant memoir Relative Distance. It was my great pleasure to serve as your copyeditor. The book is a journey story I will never forget. I’d like to talk with you about Relative Distance. I know it was published in October 2022. When did you start writing it?
David: Thanks, Trish. As always, I appreciate your support for Relative Distance!
I began writing in earnest in the spring of 2018. My retirement and finding my older brother who’d vanished for twenty-seven years (much of it traveling across America as a homeless person), were the triggering events that got me started. I took my time. It was important to me to tell the story well.
Trish: Does the book tell the story you originally set out to tell? Did the memoir change shape and direction as you wrote? If so, were you surprised by that change?