April Sawicki is a 19 year old woman from New York who lived during high school in a broken down motor home in a vacant lot at the edge of town her father won in a poker game. Her mother left her father when she was young, then her father left April at 16 to fend for herself when he went to live with his girlfriend and the woman’s son.

April, a budding singer-songwriter, ran away by stealing a neighbor’s car, and went on adventures up and down the east coast playing in bars and coffee shops and gradually and serendipitously finds connections and forms deep relationships she lacked growing up.

April’s story is the invention of talented writer, novelist and essayist Allie Larkin. Larkin’s book, The People We Keep, tells the story of April’s growth from a lonely, confused teen to a young evolving woman who learns to trust once again in deep relationships.

Not just another conversation with a writer. Larkins book is also a tale of perseverance and heart. The backstory of The People We Keep is also about a writer who refused to simplify her work to make it more formulaic and commercially mass-market palatable. In essence, Allie Larkin stood by her own sense of her work and her protagonist.

Her other novels include Stay, Why Can't I Be You, and Swimming for Sunlight. Her fifth novel, Home of the American Circus, is expected to be published this year. She lives with her husband Jeremy, and dog Roxy in San Francisco.

In our conversation not only does Allie talk about holding fast to her belief in her story and her characters, but she unveils her writing process, how much she loves dogs and how important they are to her writing, and how she has developed awareness and workarounds for her Attention Deficit Disorder.

Like her main character, Allie also is a musician and there are several places where art and reality overlap.

Besides being a talented writer Allie is a wonderful human. She has just started the Truehearts Collective, an online community of writers, musicians and artists to talk about their daily struggles living the creative life.
Links:
Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/allielarkinwrites/
Web: https://allielarkinwrites.com/
Books: https://allielarkinwrites.com/allie-larkin/
Musician Peter Mulvey: https://www.petermulvey.com/
Musician Chris Pureka: https://www.chrispureka.com/

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/

I met singer-songwriter Reese Mayfield here in Raleigh last fall. Friends had invited me to what has become known as the Five Points Music Festival. It's a gathering of local musicians performing on an impromptu stage set up in the driveway of someone's garage. it's a fundraiser for a local school.

Reese was one of the musicians performing that day. As the various musicians worked through their sets of covers and original music, I became intrigued by Reese, the youngest of the musicians.

She's an 18-year-old high school senior with a pedigree in music; her father played in various bands growing up and still plays today. Reese's parents have supported her and encouraged the Raleigh native each step of the way in exploring her creative talents.

In our conversation, Reese reveals how she got started in music with a drum kit at age 2 and took off from there. She plays piano, violin and is self-taught on guitar. While she loves learning chords on those instruments her real love is singing. She explains how she uses poetry to bring words from her heart that sometimes become songs.

She talks about how the experiences of her young life feed her creativity in music, painting, and poetry. She also talks about performing locally and her plans to pursue music in college and possibly beyond.

We talk about the significance of social media for musicians today in promoting their work.

Reese is a bubbly, vibrant, and sweet young woman who is making the most of her passions. She even sings a couple of her original songs.

Links:
Reese's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/reese._.mayfield/
Reese's website: https://www.reesemayfield.com/
Reese's YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@reese._.mayfield/featured

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/

What I know about trauma is that nearly all of us carry something in our psyches. Almost everyone you know has some part of their past that overwhelmed their emotional capacity to understand and process it and became trauma. Not all trauma is the horrific kind of rape or shooting or a tragic accident. These are the kinds of events plastered across the news that garner the most public attention.  Sometimes the experiences are more subtle but no less hurtful. 

I've known today's guest, Gordon Darr, for three decades. But what I didn't know about my friend is astounding. For most of Gordon's adult life, from age 19 to only a few years ago, Gordon kept quiet about an experience so horrific but which he buried so deep inside him,  that, as he says, "changed the trajectory of my life." 

As Gordon shares in this episode of Interesting Humans, a visit to a highly respected physician at the University of Michigan, turned into a traumatic nightmare that impacted all aspects of his life for the next forty-plus years.  As a 19-year-old UM student,  he visited a doctor who was then head of the University of Michigan's University Health Services, Dr. Robert Anderson, for what he was told was gonorrhea. He didn't see Anderson in a patient room, but in his office, where the doctor allegedly sexually molested him, not once but three times before Gordon canceled further visits. He confided in a UM nurse practitioner, who dismissed his concerns.  When Gordon brought it up with a few other students whom he thought might also have had similar experiences with Anderson, they refused to talk about it. 

Anderson, who died in 2008, was the subject of a probe by the University of Michigan police, who turned their investigation over to the Washtenaw County prosecutor. Anderson was accused of sexually assaulting hundreds of Michigan students, mostly men and many of whom were UM scholarship athletes, during his time as head of health services from 1968 until he retired in 2003. Anderson was never prosecuted despite the statements from hundreds of former UM Students because, according to the County Prosecutor, the statute of limitations on the alleged offenses expired. The University has proposed a $490 million settlement to Anderson's alleged victims. 

The case bears an uncanny resemblance to similar cases at Michigan State, Ohio State, and the University of Southern California where innocent and sometimes naive students and student-athletes were sexually assaulted by medical authorities under the guise of appropriate medical examinations. 

He reflects on how the experience impacted his interpersonal relationships in his career, his marriage and divorce, and even to how he raised his two daughters. 

I hope you connect with this kind, humble man who shares for the first time on a large scale publicly the details of this one terrible event and its impact across the decades of his life.  Gordon's is a tale of deep hurt and of redemption through hard work done in counseling and with the help of close friends, and eventually through the blending of his passion for music and teaching in the founding of his successful

Website: https://christianrward.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christianrward/