[B]OLD AGE with Debbie Weil
Behind The Scenes
Behind The Scenes With Sarah Fay
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Behind The Scenes With Sarah Fay

The award-winning author and writing teacher talks about healing her own mental Illness and applying Less and Less of More and More to life and Substack

🎙️ You can find over 100 previous episodes of the [B]old Age podcast on Apple podcasts or on my website. - Debbie

In this episode, I talk with

about the parallels between her journey of recovery from serious mental illness and her work teaching Substack writers to think big (and get paid for it). I wanted to know if Sarah’s journey to mental health was connected to her success as a writer AND to her ability and desire to help other writers. The anwer is yes. In this conversation, we touch on emotional literacy, the prerequisites for healing from mental illness, how to deal with anxieties as writers, what Substack is and who it is for, and what Sarah loves most about helping other writers. - Debbie

Show Notes

Debbie talks with

, a 52-year-old award-winning author, writing teacher, and mental health keynote speaker whose work has been featured on NPR, Oprah Daily, Forbes, The Los Angeles Times, and more. Her journalistic memoir Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins, 2022) was an Apple Best Books pick and was hailed in The New York Times as a “fiery manifesto of a memoir.” Her sequel, Cured: The Memoir, tells the story of Sarah’s full recovery from serious mental illness and how recovery is possible for everyone.

She writes for many publications, including The New York TimesThe AtlanticTime, and The Paris Review, where she was an advisory editor. Her essays have been chosen as a Notable Mention in Best American Essays and nominated for Pushcart Prizes. She’s the recipient of the Hopwood Award for Literature, as well as grants and fellowships from Yaddo, the Mellon Foundation, and the MacDowell Colony, among others. As a teacher, she’s on the faculty at Northwestern University and runs Writers at Work, a weekly publication with workshops to help creative writers produce their best work on Substack and get paid (very) well to do it. Her master plan is to make Substack the literary center of the universe. 

She lives in Chicago with her two beloved cats, who were instrumental in her recovery.

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[B]OLD AGE with Debbie Weil
Behind The Scenes
Welcome to Behind The Scenes with Debbie Weil, where I share the personal stories behind each episode of my [B]OLD AGE podcast. These add context whether or not you're a listener! Tune in for more about aging, ambition, and the search for acceptance as I explore what it means to move [b]oldly from midlife to old age.
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