'Finding your comfortable writing voice'

 

“The most important thing whenstarting out with essay writing is to find a voice with which you'recomfortable. You need to find a persona that is very much like you, butslightly caricatured.”– Anne Fadiman
The daughter of renowned literary,radio, and television personality Clifton Fadimam and World War IIcorrespondent and author Annalee Jacoby Fadiman, Anne was born on this date in 1953.  Afounding editor of the Library of Congress magazine Civilization, she has had a great career as a writer, editor and teacher.  At Yale, Fadiman teaches nonfiction writing and serves as a mentor to students who are considering careers in writing or editing.  But it was her award-winningbook The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down that brought her the mostacclaim (and many awards). Researched in a small county hospital in California,it examines a Hmong immigrant family and their cultural, linguistic, andmedical struggles in seeking treatment for their epileptic child.  In 2017 she wrote a well-received memoir, The Wine Lover's Daughter.  Fadiman is the only writer to have won national magazine awards for both reporting and essays.

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She said that while she is grateful for modern electronics and how they haveimproved the lives of writers and readers alike, she prefers a text copy to an e-book.  “There is something about holding abook - the smell and the world of association,” she said. “Even when e-booksare perfected, as they surely will be, I think it will be like being in bedwith a very well-made robot rather than a warm, soft, human being whom youlove.”