140: WRITING: Nicole Breit on writing grief (and joy, and delight and...)

Memoir Body, Healing Story with Janelle Hardy

It’s episode #140 and I’m chatting with Nicole Breit, a writer and the founder of Spark Your Story, an online writing school.

I met Nicole online when she reached out to connect over our shared love of writing, teaching writing, and the challenges and delights of marketing and teaching writing courses online, from Canada.

So, here’s some more about Nicole. She’s an award-winning essayist, poet, and writing instructor based on the traditional, unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh people in Gibsons, BC.

She holds a B.A. in English Literature (UVIC), graduating with distinction in 1996; a B.Ed. in 1999 (UBC); and a Certificate in Foundations of Narrative Therapy (2020).

Nicole’s writing explores themes of grief and healing in lyric narratives about her identity as a queer femme, as well as varied experiences of personal loss.

Her work has been widely published in literary journals and anthologies including Brevity, Pithead Chapel, Event, Hippocampus, Room, The Fiddlehead, The Puritan, After the Art, The Sounds of Silence: Journeys Through Miscarriage, and Swelling with Pride: Queer Conception and Adoption Stories.

In 2016 Nicole was the winner of the CNFC/carte blanche creative nonfiction award – the same year she won Room magazine’s CNF prize for her essay, “An Atmospheric Pressure” (selected as a Notable by the editors of Best American Essays 2017).

Her online programs center on empowerment, helping authors develop tools to move past blocks and get their difficult stories on the page as they experiment with non-traditional and hybrid storytelling structures.

When she isn’t coaching memoir writers in the Spark Your Story Lab, testing chocolate or watching This Is Us, she loves spending time at home with her wife and two kids.

It was so lovely to connect with Nicole, and I’m pretty sure you’ll enjoy listening in.

Website: Spark Your Story