Writing Toward Healing

Tomorrow night's guest reader, Michelle Nelson Giorno, was born to hippie parents with a zest for life and adventure. Traveling repeatedly between Florida to Arkansas, the South was home for her first thirty years. Then, twelve years ago, she began her own adventure and moved to the Northeast, where she currently resides in Ridgefield, Connecticut.

Suffering sexual assault at age five and again, at 20 during a home intrusion, Michelle struggled over the next 16 years transitioning from a victim to living life as a survivor, adapting her experiences in support of others as a speaker for the Rape Assault Incest National Network (RAINN) in 2009. The following year, she extended public outreach through The Center for Sexual Assault Crisis Counseling and Education in Stamford, which hosted a series of healing-oriented writing workshops she took part in with poetry therapist Dr. Marianela Medrano (a PoemAlley program implemented last December through a CAPP grant from the City of Stamford).

When Michelle is not engaged in her advocacy work (including as a founding member of Survivors Helping to Inspire New Endings [SHINE]), she enjoys spending time with her family, in the natural environment, reading and writing poetry. She is currently writing a memoir.

Michelle’s talk will be followed by Curley’s poets, reading material touching on depression, grief, and sorrow, as well as sharing views on how the writing craft helps them understand pain and sometimes overcome it.