ILHS Speaker Series Ethel Rohan • UICC

ILHS Speaker Series Ethel Rohan • Feb 28

Ethel Rohan, a Dublin native and San Francisco resident, is an award-winning author that focuses on writing from emotional experience versus actual experience. Writers are all too familiar with the golden rule ‘Write What You Know.’ The adage rightly champions honesty and authenticity in writing, but can also hamper and even shutdown writers’ creativity. Fiction writers who try to adhere to only writing what they know are often faced with dilemmas: I’m a woman, but want to write from the point-of-view of a male character. I’m White, so does that mean I can’t write from the point-of-view of a Black character? I’ve never flown a plane, but really want to write this great story about a pilot. For memoir and non-fiction writers, there are also dilemmas around memory, perspective, and fact versus truth. For Ethel, this particular golden rule is better understood and more useful artistically when it’s qualified to ‘Write What You Know Emotionally.’

Ethel Rohan’s debut novel, The Kingdom Keeper, will publish from St. Martin’s Press, 2017. She is also the author of two story collections, Goodnight Nobody and Cut Through the Bone, the former longlisted for The Edge Hill Prize and the latter longlisted for The Story Prize. An award-winning story and memoir writer, her work has appeared in The New York Times, World Literature Today, PEN America, Tin House Online, Guernica Magazine, BREVITY Magazine, The Rumpus, and more. Born and raised in Dublin, Ireland, she lives in San Francisco. Visit Ethel Rohan’s website here

United Irish Cultural Center, SF at 5pm