142. Effy Redman | Saving Face, writing a memoir, and claiming identity

Arts Calling

Weekly Shoutout: Friend of the show Alvaro Saar Rios on The Scene Podcast, give it a listen!

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Hi there,

Today I am so excited to be arts calling author Effy Redman! (www.effyredman.com)

About our guest: Effy Redman's writing investigates the intersection of disability and identity. She has work published in The New York Times, Vice, Ravishly, Chronogram, Berkeley Poetry Review, and Iron Horse Literary Review, among other places. She holds an MFA in Memoir from CUNY: Hunter College, where she received an Honorable Mention for the Helen Gray Cone Fellowship, and a BA in Literature/Drama from Bennington College, where she was an Ellen Knowles Harcourt Scholar and a Bennington Scholar. effyredman.com.

Twitter: @effyredman Facebook: Effy Redman Instagram: @effyredman38

Thanks for this wonderful conversation, Effy! All the best!

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SAVING FACE, now available from Vine Leaves Press!

https://www.vineleavespress.com/saving-face-by-effy-redman.html

ABOUT SAVING FACE: What's in a smile? Or the absent smile? Saving Face is Effy Redman's thought-provoking answer. Born with a rare condition of facial paralysis called Moebius Syndrome, Redman's grit and eye for beauty help her survive childhood bullying and adolescent doldrums. Her physical transformation at age thirteen via plastic surgery eviscerates her concept of image, just in time for her and her family to immigrate from hardscrabble Manchester, England to America's disorientingly scenic upstate New York. Not until diagnosis in young adulthood with bipolar disorder does Redman come out of the closet as a lesbian, finally claiming her most inherent identity. Saving Face is a searing personal tribute to anybody who has ever felt like an outsider. This memoir honors the grace of a face that stands out in a crowd, defying societal beauty norms. Disability meets transcendence, suffering becomes hope, and the individual expands into community. The inability to smile, in Redman’s book, lights a window onto the human capacity for redemption.

★★★★★ “This author goes where no other might dare.” Catherine Filloux, award-winning playwright

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Arts Calling is produced by Jaime Alejandro (cruzfolio.com).

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Much love,

j