This Way Back: A Woman's Bicultural Identity & Sexual Orientation
February 5, 2021
Hosted by Diane Dewey
[Download MP3] [itunes] [Bookmark Episode]
Guest Information
Episode Description
This Way Back dramatizes a childhood split between Queens, New York, and Cyprus, an island nation with a long colonial history and a culture to which Joanna Eleftheriou could never quite adjust. The book avows a Greek-Cypriot-American lesbian’s existence by documenting its scenes: reenacting an 1829 mass suicide by jumping off a school stage onto gym mats at St. Nicholas, harvesting carobs on ancestral land, purchasing UNESCO-protected lace, marching in the island’s first gay pride parade, visiting Cyprus’s occupied north against a dying father’s wish, and pruning geraniums, cypress trees, and jasmine after her father grew too weak to lift the shears. While the author’s life binds the essays in This Way Back into what reads like a memoir, the book questions memoir’s conventional boundaries between the individual and her community, and between political and personal loss, the human and the environment, and the living and the dead. It is spellbinding! https://www.joannaeleftheriou.com
Dropping In
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Drop in to the dream of becoming an author. How does the book publishing business actually work? If you’re ready to tell your story, what’s the best way to do it? Do you need help crafting this tale? What about workshopping – is that helpful? When are you ready to show your work to a developmental or copy editor? The time may be now. If you’ve finished your manuscript, what are the next steps? Place your book in the context of the marketplace and decide, who is your audience? What’s the best platform to publish your work? Podcast, electronic or paper bound book? Are you well-versed in developing your book proposal? That means having your agent pitch down. Once you’ve secured an agent, what’s the optimal venue to get your book published, with all the support it needs to be seen and heard in media outlets? Whether through traditional, hybrid, indie presses, or a combination, we’ll bring you the experts in the fields of book coaching, agenting, editing, legal advice, publishing, and publicists, plus resources on the craft of writing. No matter what route you take, your best bet is to get educated. Drop in to how stories are made. In the end, we’ll all become stories. —Margaret Atwood
Diane Dewey
My most pressing question has always been about identity: Who am I? Growing up near Philadelphia with my adoptive family, my genetic identity was hidden. Then, my Swiss biological father, Otto, contacted me when I was age forty-seven in 2002. I’d been told by my adoptive parents that my biological parents were dead, supposedly to protect me. Meeting Otto upended my life. Through him, I met my German biological mother’s family to discover that her story too, had been changed; that she’d not wanted to surrender me and she’d searched for me all her life. Finding my truth was essential.
Based on my experience I am excited to talk to people about their own search for identity. My education includes a BA from Villanova University, a certificate from the Art Institute of Philadelphia and a Master of Science in Mental Health Counseling from Capella University. I’ve worked for The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, The SoHo Partnership and the National Academy of Design and have studied writing through New York University’s Continuing Education program. As an entrepreneur, I founded my art appraisal business, The Realization of Art in 2006. My non-fiction writing has been published in Shared Space, a monograph, and in Artes online magazine. Writing workshops worldwide have given me the chance to learn and hone my craft. My first book, “Fixing the Fates,” was awarded the National Non-Fiction Author’s Association Silver Medal and the Living Now Award.
