Writing About Illness & the Healing Power of Story: A Mini-Memoir Workshop

If you would prefer to buy your ticket by phone, you may call Wellesley Books at 781-431-1160.

About ticketing:

• Admission to the event is $5.
• To purchase the book with your admission, choose Admission + Book and we will waive your admission fee.
• If you decide to purchase the book at the event, we will discount your book purchase by $5.

Please note that you must purchase your copy of the book from Wellesley Books in order to have the author sign it at the event.

Please also note that we cannot issue ticket refunds within 48 hours of the event.

RUN OF SHOW

Memoirists Jennifer Crystal and Melanie Brooks will read from their books and then discuss their lives and what they've learned about giving words to difficult stories.

This will be followed by a writing prompt led by the authors so that the audience can learn how to write from their own experiences. Audience members will be encouraged to share what they write.

The night will conclude with a Q&A followed by a signing line during which the audience will be able to meet the authors.

ABOUT JENNIFER CRYSTAL

Jennifer Crystal runs the Writing to Heal Immersive Program at Grub Street Creative Writing Center, where she also teaches other non-fiction classes. For more than a decade, she has written about the chronic illness patient experience for the Global Lyme Alliance, a column that has received mention in The New Yorker and CQ Researcher. She is a Senior Writer for Harvard Health Publishing, where she also served as the Patient Experience Representative for the Lyme Wellness Initiative. Jennifer has been interviewed for CBS News and for articles in Undark and Experience Life, and her story has been part of many anthologies, webinars, and podcasts. Her written work has appeared in The Boston Globe, Aeon’s Psyche, WBUR’s Cognoscenti, Harvard Health Blog, and many other outlets. Jennifer holds a B.A. from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. from Emerson College and has completed a summer of study at the Bread Loaf School of English and a workshop in narrative medicine at Columbia University.

Her new book, One Tick Stopped the Clock, is a meticulously detailed look at living with Lyme disease. Blending medical mystery with wit, sensitivity, and a sharp understanding of the human experience, One Tick Stopped the Clock offers hope and inspiration for anyone who can’t go back, but instead must move forward at a new pace.

Learn more at www.jennifercrystal.com

ABOUT MELANIE BROOKS

Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from college), and chocolate Lab.

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