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Mental health is a tough topic for many writers. In November, we’ll be talking to three writers – a novelist, a memoirist and poet, and a middle grade writer – whose recent works successfully delve into this tough topic. We’ll explore their approach to writing about mental health in their respective genres, how their own experiences have informed their writing, the importance of taking care with this topic and what it takes to get it right. This conversation will be moderated by WLT Program Director Sam Babiak.
Buy our panelists books and support indie bookstores! You can find the November Third Thursday booklist here.
Meg Eden Kuyatt is a 2020 Pitch Wars mentee. Her work is published or forthcoming in magazines including Prairie Schooner, The Rumpus, Poetry Northwest, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO and CV2.
Meg received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Maryland College Park. She teaches creative writing courses and has taught at a range of places, including Anne Arundel Community College, Southern New Hampshire University online, University of Maryland College Park, Eckleburg Workshops, and The Writer's Center in Bethesda since 2013. .
She is the author of five poetry chapbooks, the novel Post-High School Reality Quest (2017) the poetry collection Drowning in the Floating World (2020), and the forthcoming novel-in-verse Good Different (2023). She is also a participating author with the PEN/Faulkner Writers in Schools program.
Besides being a writer, Meg has worked as an advertising manager, creative writing instructor, eBay seller, research assistant in linguistics and neuroscience, and publishing and marketing contact for a small press. She is the webinar coordinator for the SCBWI MD/DE/WV region, and runs the Magfest MAGES Library blog, which posts accessible academic articles about video games.
Meg Eden is a follower of Christ, neurodivergent (autistic and anxiety disorder), an extroverted-introvert, and a complete nerd for all things Pokémon and Fire Emblem. She loves to hear about what people believe, what shows and games they love, and why. She lives with her husband and two cats.
Tomás Q. Morín is the author most recently of the poetry collection Machete and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways. He is co-editor of the anthology Coming Close: Forty Essays on Philip Levine and translator of The Heights of Macchu Picchu by Pablo Neruda. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Nation, Poetry, Slate, and Boston Review. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He teaches at Rice University and Vermont College of Fine Arts.
LaToya Watkins’s writing has appeared in A Public Space, The Sun, McSweeney's, Kenyon Review, The Pushcart Prize Anthology, and elsewhere. She has received grants, scholarships, and fellowships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, MacDowell, Yaddo, Hedgebrook, and A Public Space (she was one of their 2018 Emerging Writers Fellows). She holds a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas. PERISH is her debut novel.
Sam Babiak holds a B.A. in English Literature with a certificate in Creative Writing with Honors from the University of Texas at Austin. She loves talking to writers about their craft and has moderated panels and conversations with the WLT, the Texas Book Festival, HavenCon, and BookPeople. She’s spent time as a reading intern with a literary agent at Massie & McQuilkin and she’s volunteered for the Echo Literary Arts Magazine fiction board, Badgerdog Creative Writing Camps, and Letters About Literature. Her writing can be found or is forthcoming from HotHouse Literary Journal and the lickety~split. She is from Laredo, Texas and currently lives in Austin, Texas.
