Featured Author/Open Mic with Natasha Williams

Featured Author/Open Mic with Natasha Williams

Williams’ memoir, The Parts of Him I Kept, is an intimate account of coming of age in the face of a father's schizophrenic unraveling. Williams investigates the limits of our medical and cultural understanding of schizophrenia while chronicling the shared burden and benefits of caring for a mentally ill family member.  The Parts of Him I Kept humanizes living with mental illness and illuminates how families find hope and even thrive in the face of the extraordinary challenge of mental illness.

This is Natasha Williams' debut book. She has an MA from the University of Pennsylvania and attended the Bread Loaf School of English and the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. Excerpts and essays have been published in the Bread Loaf Journal, Change Seven, LIT, Memoir Magazine, Onion River Review, Writers Read, Post Road and South Dakota Review.

Natasha Williams offers us a portrait of America at a time when everything was in flux, when people searched for new ways to live, and (if they were lucky) ended up simply loving each other.” 

– Nick Flynn, Author of Another Bullshit Night in Suck City and Low life.