Join seasoned literary podcasted Mitzi Rapkin for a talk with author of the New York Times bestseller book Poster Child, The Still Point of the Turning World, Sanctuary, and Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg. Her new book,
I Would Die If I Were You: Notes on Art and Truth-Telling is an anti-ablest, feminist book about creativity, one that grapples with how to cultivate a vibrant and joyful life from hard experiences and grief. Emily describes it herself: "It's like Rick Rubin’s
The Creative Act for very sad, super smart people."
For her entire life, Emily has been answering questions in elevators:
what’s wrong with you? What happened to your body? (Emily lost her leg when she was a child, which she writes about in her 2021 memoir
Frida Kahlo and My Left Leg) and, in the case of her son’s terminal illness and death, she’s been told more times than she can count: “
I would die if I were you.” But, as Emily says, she is alive—and lived—precisely
because she learned how to frame and write about some of the most difficult stories a person can live through, alchemizing pain into truth and meaning.
As someone who writes and teaches books about loss and grief, two very loaded and universal subjects, Black wanted to write a book that would empower readers with “conversation stopping” stories to tell their stories in a way that can be healing for those who may have been forced to live a similar story.
Based on two decades of teaching a wide range of students with diverse and difficult experiences,
I Would Die If I Were You is a book for people who have ever felt like their story was “too sad” to tell, or didn’t want to tell their story because the emotional burden of the response of the listener was its own kind of traumatic event. It's a book for readers of George Saunders, Melissa Febos, and Lidia Yuknavitch—writers of those special kinds of craft books that go well beyond discussing writing and creativity to explore broader subjects like friendship, love, loss, parenting, the body, and more.
