I had this trajectory: I wanted to write a novel, and then teach. Terese Marie Mailhot: I’m surprised, especially because I’d always wanted to teach fiction. Are you at all surprised that your first book is a memoir? Nicole Chung: You’ve written a lot of fiction a couple of chapters in this book were originally published as fiction. 'I was able to feel established and safer and more visible as a human being by writing.' It was a privilege to speak with Mailhot about her artistic influences, her advice for aspiring authors, the work of creating art from grief, and how writing makes her feel 'untouchable.' 'Writing it all down felt like it transformed me a little,' she said.

Mailhot writes that 'we carry pain until we can reconcile with it through ceremony,' and in our conversation she told me that writing 'the darkest thing you can think to say' can also change how we hold and think about our traumas. It’s a book you might finish in an afternoon, knowing it will stay with you always. Mailhot confronts anger that ravages and love that creates as she details past trauma and abuse, her tumultuous experiences as a young mother, her eventual diagnosis and treatment for post-traumatic stress and bipolar II disorder, and her fight to define herself as an artist, a woman, a daughter, and a mother.

Terese Marie Mailhot’s ' Heart Berries' (out from Counterpoint, February 6) is a startling beauty of a memoir, full of death and life - as much a book about becoming as it is a reckoning with the past.

Terese marie mailhot books