Book Launch Party for Sonya Lea’s Wondering Who You Are
In July, Hugo House will play host to the launch party of Sonya Lea’s new memoir, Wondering Who You Are, published by Tin House Books. The memoir braids the story of Lea’s and her husband’s relationship before and after he emerges from a surgery with no memory of their life together. The story follows their exploration of a marriage no longer grounded in shared memories.
Christopher Ryan, author of Sex At Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What it Means for Modern Relationships, said the book is “an amazing accomplishment. Every page sparkles with wisdom, candor, insight, and love.”
The party includes:
+ book reading and signing
+ Q & A with Peter Mountford
+ a live musical performance by Trey Gunn (of King Crimson)
+ mask-making with shoot-your-own photography tableau
+ Signature drink: The Bourbon Renewal
Sonya Lea is a screenwriter and essayist.
Her memoir, Wondering Who You Are (Tin House) is about her husband’s cancer treatment, through which he lost the memory of their life. Excerpts from the book won an international memoir prize and an Artist Trust Award. Oprah Book Club author Bret Lott said this work “is strong and strange and haunting and moving all at once. … [She] has a voice and tone that are so truthful and authentic.”
Sonya Lea’s essays and interviews have appeared in Salon, The Southern Review, Brevity, Guernica, Cold Mountain Review, Tricycle, The Prentice Hall College Reader, The Rumpus, and The Butter. She has won several screenwriting awards, and has placed in the Nicholl Fellowship, an international competition established by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Sonya has written television series for production houses as well as adapted novels for the screen.
Lea teaches writing at Hugo House in Seattle, and she’s leading a pilot project to teach writing to women veterans through the Red Badge Project. She recently directed her first short film, Every Beautiful Thing, which will play in festivals in 2015. Originally from Kentucky, she currently lives in Seattle, Washington.