“Unveiling Secrets: Hollay Ghadery’s Journey from Book Publicist to Memoirist in ‘Fuse'”
MDH: What’s it like being both an author and a publicist? How does one inform the other? When you were writing your memoir Fuse, about coming to terms with your Iranian/Canadian identity and your struggles with mental health, did you ever think about the market for memoirs like yours? Aspiring writers are always told, “write for yourself, not the market,” but I wonder if this is hard to turn off in your own writing?
HG: Not at all. When I wrote Fuse, I was writing it for me and people like me, but I wasn’t necessarily thinking about a giant market. I was just thinking — and I know this is so cliché — I want to write a book that I wish exists but doesn’t. I was writing because I felt alone for so long. It scared me that girls were dying, and I needed to write about it. I’m talking about the fact that there’s this major issue with biracial, mixed-race women and mental illness, especially when it comes to eating disorders. But no one’s talking about it. I was aware that some people might see themselves in my story, but I did not expect so many. That was incredibly shocking to me. And lovely and scary.
Post Comment