Lily Dunn : Into Being : The Radical Craft of Memoir and Its Power to Transform

In Into Being Lily Dunn explores the ways in which writing one’s life has the potential to transform it; how writing, if done well, can produce “symbolic repair.” We look at Virginia Woolf’s notion of “moments of being” as a means and method to find the form that best fits your specific story to tell. We look at different ways memoirists have used the imagination within their own work, and the various ethical issues that arise when writing about people close to you or about other peoples’ trauma. And from beginning to end, we look at Lily’s own remarkable memoir, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling, as a way into these questions as well. For the bonus audio archive Lily walks us through one of the writing exercises in the book. This joins a large and ever-growing archive, everything from craft talks by Marlon James and Jeannie Vanasco, to writing prompts from Danez Smith & Lucy Ives, to readings by everyone from Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore to Richard Powers. You can find out about how to

You can listen to Lily Dunn : Into Being : The Radical Craft of Memoir and Its Power to Transform online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Lily Dunn : Into Being : The Radical Craft of Memoir and Its Power to Transform is an episode from Between The Covers : Conversations with Writers in Fiction, Nonfiction & Poetry by David Naimon, Milkweed Editions.

This episode is 1:56:09 long.

This episode was published on Jan 1, 2026.

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