Tuesday, September 17th, 2019, 6 p.m.
Essayist and psychotherapist Sarah C. Townsend discusses her lyrical work, Setting the Wire: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis, in conversation with Mary Mosseau.
A lyric exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and familial ties, Sarah C. Townsend’s debut work weaves together personal anecdote, film, music, visual art, and psychology. Setting the Wire: A Memoir of Postpartum Psychosis is a visceral reflection on the experience of fragmentation as a young psychotherapist and new mother.
About the author: Sarah Townsend is the author of Setting the Wire (The Lettered Streets Press, April 2019). Her essays have appeared in The Writer in the World and Pitkin Review, and a coauthored paper with Elisabeth Young-Bruehl serves as a chapter in Subject to Biography: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and Writing Women’s Lives. Sarah received her MFA in creative writing from Goddard College, her MA in counseling psychology from Northwestern University, and is a graduate of the College of Letters at Wesleyan University. Setting the Wire was featured on Beyond Well with Sheila Hamilton and The Ish with Cameron Dezen Hammon. Sarah writes and teaches in and around Seattle, WA and coordinates The Goddard College Lighthouse Writers' Conference & Retreat in Port Townsend, WA.
Likely available, but must be ordered by email/phone
Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Women's Studies. SETTING THE WIRE is a memoir of postpartum psychosis and a meditation on containment: what we hold and what holds us together. A lyric exploration of motherhood, mental illness, and familial ties, Sarah C. Townsend's debut work weaves together personal anecdote, film, music, visual art, and psychology.