MELANIE BROOKS

Melanie Brooks joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the misinformation and fear around HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, the role of the evangelical church in her family’s history, the emotional toll of keeping secrets, her work in the growing field of narrative medicine, radical listening, revisiting our heritage and beliefs, leaning into courage, vulnerability and risk, and her memoir A Hard Silence.

This episode features Melanie Brooks, Author of “A Hard Silence”. Melanie shares her courage stories about a the journey of writing her book “A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all.” We also talk about how the reseach for her cureent book helped her write her first book “Writing Hard Stories, Celebrated Memorists who Shaped Art from Trauma.” This journey included many steps in courage to be able to tell her story.

Melanie Brooks’s father was infected with HIV from contaminated blood in the mid-1980s. He decided to keep his illness a secret, and died 10 years later. Brooks’s candid memoir, A Hard Silence, looks at the consequences of her family’s secret-keeping and, in this excerpt, interrogates the stigma and discrimination that played into their decision to hide the truth.

Listen to a reading from A Hard Silence and my conversation with Michelle Redo on The Daring to Tell podcast. 

Rob Caldwell interviews Melanie Brooks for 207: News Center Maine's News Magazine about A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all.

Listen to my conversation with host Janeane Bernstein as we talk about A Hard Silence.

Dean Shalhoup writes about Melanie Brooks's new memoir, A HARD SILENCE.

"When I commit words to the page, I’m embarking on a rigorous and intentional act of self-reflection. As a memoirist, though, my journey doesn’t stop there. By writing through my stories, I’m engaging in an act of community. I’m seeking language that bridges my experiences with those of others, and I’m hoping that my words will open space for their words." - Melanie Brooks

I'm honored to have Writing Hard Stories featured in a memoir book roundup on Signature Reads, Penguin Random House's reading blog, among so many books that have been influential to my own writing process.

In this blog post, Michael Steinberg revisits an interview originally conducted by Donna Talarico that appeared in Hippocampus Magazine and follows up on the publication of Writing Hard Stories. 

“It’s not about necessarily letting the story go, but it’s kind of re-envisioning it in a way that it doesn’t become such a burdensome thing. Writing about it will, in some way, change the story for you or change the way you carry that story.” - Melanie Brooks

Listen to my conversation with host Janeane Bernstein as we talk about WRITING HARD STORIES.

"Interacting with people—that’s the idea behind this Melanie’s book. Writers sharing the stories behind their stories with one writer, who then shares those stories, and her own, with others. Conversations that can heal and inspire, a conversation that’s perhaps just getting started.' - Donna Talarico, Hippocampus Magazine

"For writers struggling with the next step of their journeys, Brooks’ work is a signpost showing them the way, urging them onward, offering companionship, and ultimately proving that the destination is already well within sight, even if they can’t yet see it. " - Amanda Silva, Ploughshares

Many of us have carried at least one hard story for years, suffering under the weight of secrecy and silence. But what if you didn't have to carry it anymore? What if writing or telling it could not only free you, but deepen your relationships with your loved ones? Melanie Brooks--author of Writing Hard Stories and A Hard Silence--is here to help us write and tell our hard stories.

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Melanie Brooks joins the Writing Your Resilience Podcast to speak about her book, A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith When HIV/AIDS Changes It All. This is the book she once struggled to write about her father's death.  In today's episode, we'll explore the powerful impact silence has on you and how to break through it.

Roz Morrisl interviews Melanie Brooks about her new memoir, A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all.

"Brooks’ voice is so vulnerable, so raw, on the page, and despite this, still tells a thoughtful, coherent story.”"

- Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader

Listen to my conversation with Tia Levings as we talk about all things writing and A Hard Silence.

Kathy Seward MacKay writes about Melanie Brooks' new memoir, A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all

In this deeply personal and emotional episode, we embark on a journey with Melanie as she copes with her surgeon father’s terminal disease and subsequent death. We discuss the emotional process of writing her book, A Hard Silence: one daughter remaps family, grief and faith, when HIV/AIDS changes it all, a cathartic and intimate journey that allowed Melanie to confront her grief head-on.

"I believe there’s deep merit to giving this narrative shape to our painful stories. Writing about traumatic experiences do not repair them. However, re-entering those memories, taking them apart, and then putting them back together again on my own terms, has transformed them into something meaningful, maybe even beautiful, for me and, I hope, for my readers, too." -Melanie Brooks

Listen to my conversation with host Janeane Bernstein as we talk about my memoir-in-progress, All the Things I Couldn't Say.

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"I'm sharing with you my interview with Melanie. She has lots of great things to say about writing—and living. I hope you'll watch and share it with others." 

- Nadia Colburn, Align Your Story

Listen to my webinar with Leanna James Blackwell, director of Bay Path University's MFA program, on "Shaping Art from Trauma."

"Language has its own transformative power, and I’ve come to understand that the gift of shared experience, shared stories, can sometimes be the best medicine we have to offer." - Melanie Brooks

"I thank Melanie Brooks for the liberating read, one which I am sure will inspire many other writers." - Sheelagh Russell-Brown, Understorey Magazine

"An inspiring guide to ennobling personal stories that travel to the dark sides of life."

In this first episode of the Stone House Readers' Series podcast, Melanie Brooks talks with Troy Meyers about her powerful memoir, A Hard Silence.

In her latest episode of the Ruthless Compassion Podcast, Marcia Sirota speaks with Melanie Brooks about the devastating family secret she was obliged to keep and the transformative power of finally being able to speak the truth.

"A Hard Silence is a profoundly moving, personal, and informative account of the challenges of dealing with AIDS from a daughter's perspective."

-Emma Megan for Readers' Favorite

Annie Scholl interviews Melanie Brooks about her new memoir, A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all.

Suzanne Strempek Shea interviews Melanie Brooks about A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all, for Brevity Magazine's Nonfiction Blog

Lara Lillibridge interviews Melanie Brooks about her new memoir, A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all.

Melanie Brooks, author of Writing Hard Stories, reads from her memoir manuscript, A Hard Silence, which shares her perspective on what it was like to grow up living with the deep secret that her father contracted AIDS in 1985 from a tainted blood transfusion.

"With our narratives, we invite others to lean toward our experiences and give them permission to share some pieces of their own." - Melanie Brooks

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"Every time I sat down with one of these writers and listened to them talk candidly about their own journeys, I found similarities in their processes and mine, and listened to their encouragement that always included the promise that I would get to a place where I felt differently about my story, where I could breathe a little bit easier. " - Melanie Brooks

It takes a lot of emotional soul searching and deep diving into our memories and our experiences in order for us to reach that place of authenticity and really discover what the authentic story is behind our experiences." - Melanie Brooks

Listen to my conversation with host Janeane Bernstein as we talk about WRITING HARD STORIES.

"I wanted to hear about those lonely treks into memory from each one of these authors because then I might feel less lonely on my own trek." - Melanie Brooks

"Her written recollections of meetings with memoirists read as if we are eavesdropping on their intimate conversations." - Ashley Supinski, Hippocampus Magazine

"Her written recollections of meetings with memoirists read as if we are eavesdropping on their intimate conversations." - Ashley Supinski, Hippocampus Magazine