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Cover image of Stories Are What Save Us
Cover image of Stories Are What Save Us
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Stories Are What Save Us

A Survivor's Guide to Writing about Trauma

David Chrisinger
foreword by Brian Turner, author of My Life as a Foreign Country
afterword by Angela Ricketts, author of No Man's War

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A seasoned writer and teacher of memoir explores both the difficulties inherent in writing about personal trauma and the techniques for doing so in a compelling way.

Since 2013, David Chrisinger has taught military veterans, their families, and other trauma survivors how to make sense of and recount their stories of loss and transformation. The lessons he imparts can be used by anyone who has ever experienced trauma, particularly people with a deep need to share that experience in a way that leads to connection and understanding.

In Stories Are What Save Us, Chrisinger shows—through writing...

A seasoned writer and teacher of memoir explores both the difficulties inherent in writing about personal trauma and the techniques for doing so in a compelling way.

Since 2013, David Chrisinger has taught military veterans, their families, and other trauma survivors how to make sense of and recount their stories of loss and transformation. The lessons he imparts can be used by anyone who has ever experienced trauma, particularly people with a deep need to share that experience in a way that leads to connection and understanding.

In Stories Are What Save Us, Chrisinger shows—through writing exercises, memoir excerpts, and lessons he's learned from his students—the most efficient ways to uncover and effectively communicate what you've learned while fighting your life's battles, whatever they may be. Chrisinger explores both the difficulties inherent in writing about personal trauma and the techniques for doing so in a compelling way. Weaving together his journey as a writer, editor, and teacher, he reveals his own deeply personal story of family trauma and abuse and explains how his life has informed his writing.

Part craft guide, part memoir, and part teacher's handbook, Stories Are What Save Us presents readers with a wide range of craft tools and storytelling structures that Chrisinger and his students have used to process conflict in their own lives, creating beautiful stories of growth and transformation. Throughout, this profoundly moving, laser-focused book exemplifies the very lessons it strives to teach. A foreword by former soldier and memoirist Brian Turner, author of My Life as a Foreign Country, and an afterword by military wife and memoirist Angela Ricketts, author of No Man's War: Irreverent Confessions of an Infantry Wife, bookend the volume.

Reviews

Reviews

I was thoroughly engaged both by Chrisinger's stories of his family and friends, as well as his journey to craft his experiences into stories.

Guiding readers who are interested in writing about their traumatic experiences, Stories Are What Save Us helps to make such writing and the process that generates it meaningful. Anyone who is looking to make sense of their trauma, particularly military veterans, would be interested in reading this well-conceived book.

David Chrisinger is a deft and engaging storyteller. He compellingly weaves together his own inspirational and healing story with vibrant examples of the memoir form. Helping veterans and others who have experienced trauma to write their stories, this book fills a niche in the memoir-writing genre. I look forward to having it in my resource library.

A timely book that will appeal to anyone looking for a way to tell their story and in doing so gain a better sense of control and peace. Stories Are What Save Us will be useful in courses and workshops on expressive writing, writing to heal, or trauma.

About

Book Details

Publication Date
Status
Available
Trim Size
6
x
9
Pages
240
ISBN
9781421440804
Table of Contents

Foreword, by Brian Turner
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Atonement
Part I. The Searching
Chapter 1. Finding Your Story of Transformation
Chapter 2. Uncovering Your Object of Desire
Chapter 3. Recognizing the

Foreword, by Brian Turner
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Atonement
Part I. The Searching
Chapter 1. Finding Your Story of Transformation
Chapter 2. Uncovering Your Object of Desire
Chapter 3. Recognizing the Story underneath Your Story
Chapter 4. Turning Yourself into a Character
Part II. The Structure
Chapter 5. Incorporating the Five Essentials of Storytelling
Chapter 6. Starting with One True Thing
Part III. The Story
Chapter 7. Crafting Immersive Scenes
Chapter 8. Using Fiction to Tell the Truth
Chapter 9. Telling Your Story to Build Connection and Understanding
Afterword, by Angela Ricketts
Storytelling Exercises
Suggested Further Reading
About the Author
Index

Author Bios
David Chrisinger
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David Chrisinger

David Chrisinger (CHICAGO, IL) is the director of the policy writing program at the University of Chicago’s Harris School of Public Policy. He is the author of Public Policy Writing That Matters and Stories Are What Save Us: A Survivor's Guide to Writing about Trauma and the editor of See Me for Who I Am: Student Veterans' Stories of War and Coming Home.