Christy Ann Conlin on Turning Life Into Your Own Story | Ep. 75

We all have a part of our pasts that we can feel the victim of, and the truth is that when we’re children, we are the victim. But what about when we become adults? Do we carry the victim status along with ourselves or do we grab the pen which has been writing our life story so far and take over?

Christy Ann has quite literally grabbed that pen and started writing through her own struggles and thought patterns with fictional stories. Her witty and thoughtful tales show a reflection of herself in different quantities, and the quality of her stories resonate in your bones.

We cover some of her tales in our episode together and also discuss the feeling of being an idiot and how to prove that feeling wrong.

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CHRISTY ANN CONLIN is the author of three critically acclaimed books, Heave and The Memento, and most recently, Watermark, a short story collection. Heave was a national bestseller, a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Her short stories and essays have appeared in numerous literary journals including Best Canadian Stories, Brick, Geist, Room, Numéro Cinq and Review. Her work has also been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the American Short Fiction Prize. Her radio broadcast work includes co-creating and hosting CBC Fear Itself, a national summer radio series, along with documentaries for CBC The Doc Project and CBC Outfront. Christy Ann was born and raised in seaside Nova Scotia, where she still resides along with her big quirky sandwich generation family and assorted livestock. Christy Ann is also a passionate mental health advocate and motivational speaker.