almost famous women by megan mayhew bergman

SR: Some of your stories in Almost Famous Women were originally featured in other publications, e.g. For the characters in Almost Famous Women, I would ask myself: what was it like to be her? to live this way? to take these risks? to suffer these losses? So when I hear about an event or character, and I get that tingling of inspiration, my mind usually follows the path of empathy. As a writer, I know these big feelings are what make interesting work with emotional range. Without being able to explain why, I used to protect myself from this sort of stimulus, from big feelings. When I was a child, I was one of those highly sensitive beings who couldn't read or watch sad scenes. It's how I engage with the world - I understand it better now as an adult. Megan Mayhew Bergman : Empathy is what lights up my brain. Superstition Review: In an interview with Los Angeles Review of Books, you reveal, “My primary way into a story is through empathy….” Can you explain this idea further? How did empathy inform the stories in Almost Famous Women? I cannot help but feel incredibly lucky that she has shared her gift of illumination with me here.” In this interview, Megan discusses her inclination toward empathy, the trickiness of defining femininity, and the secret to an exemplary line. For a season, I was suspended in a rich state of musing. Of the process, she said, “The stories in Megan Mayhem Bergman’s latest collection so powerfully influenced my mind. This interview was conducted via email by Interview Editor Niki Johnson.

(Jan.“That Tingling of Inspiration,” an interview with Megan Mayhew Bergman Most of these accents do not sound natural or believable.

However, she is less skilled at the many accents required by this diverse collection, whose stories require fluidity with German, Kenyan, Eastern European, Bahamian, and many other inflections. Reader Lockford does a fine job with the range of emotions, from wry detachment to despair to joy. The scope of the book is ambitious, with multiple settings and secondary characters serving as narrators as a result, the stories in the audio edition are increasingly hard to differentiate. All of these characters are historical figures “lost to popular memory”-conjoined twins who aspire to show business, a painter who has not put hand to canvas in 40 years, and survivors of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp whose jutting clavicles and hollow eyes are known in haunting photographs. This collection of short stories takes actual women from history and weaves imaginative narratives around them.

Almost famous women by megan mayhew bergman