Memoir and Purpose: an author discussion

Please join us for a discussion with Karen DeBonis, author of Growth: A Mother, Her Son and the Brain Tumor They Survived, and Laura Carney, author of My Father's List: How Living My Dad's Dream Set Me Free.

Can writing a memoir become or change your life’s purpose?  Two debut authors discuss what they’ve learned and how they’ve grown through the process.

Karen DeBonis writes about motherhood, people-pleasing, and personal growth, inspired by the experience of raising her son, Matthew. Her debut memoir is Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost, Newsweek.com, Today.com, and numerous literary journals. A happy empty-nester, Karen lives upstate in Troy, New York with her husband of forty-one years.

Laura Carney, writer and magazine copy editor in New York, has been published in The Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Hill, Runner’s World, Good Housekeeping, The Fix, Upworthy, Maria Shriver’s The Sunday Paper, and other publications. She has worked as a copy editor for national magazines—primarily women’s— for twenty years, including Vanity Fair, GQ, People, and Good Housekeeping. Her first book was, My Father’s List: How Living My Dad's Dream Set Me Free.