QuickTalk Friday Interview Series
Prompted to Write About Grief
An interview with Bernie Pullen
Bernie saw the music and memoir prompt in The Memoirist, and she knew what song she’d choose and what story to write.
Here’s how KiKi Walter put it:
“Pick a song. A song you like, a song you hate, a song that always hits you when you hear it, a song you haven’t heard in a long time.
A song that makes you laugh — anything.
But it should be one you know well and always brings about a reaction in you — whether it is singing it in your car … turning it up super loud … or if it makes you sad. Listen to the song. Let it take you to that place. The person. The memory.
Bernie’s story took me to the place, person, the memory. No doubt about it.
Scot: I loved how your story “Nothing is Going To Stop us Now” was happy and sad about falling in love and losing your husband to cancer two years later. I’m curious whether writing has helped you deal with such a loss.
Bernie: There’s no doubt that writing helped me get through my loss. I wrote pages and pages in my journals. When I lost my husband, I was a young woman with a two-month-old. I remember it being quite a lonely, dark place, and my only…
