Welcome to the Intralingo World Lit Podcast, featuring authors and translators from around the globe.
Margaret Davis Ghielmetti is a traveler, writer and live lit storyteller whose memoir is about setting off with her husband as he took on roles managing exclusive hotels around the world. In discovering the world, Margaret discovered herself.
I felt a kindred soul in Margaret and all she shares in Brave(ish): A Memoir of a Recovering Perfectionist. We talk about looking outward, to other people and cultures in this world, while also looking inward, at ourselves. We talk about the process of becoming who we truly want to be by recognizing what she calls “The Family Handbook”: the rules and ways of being we inherit.
Over the course of her time abroad, from country to country, and returning to the US to look after her aging parents, Margaret was able to take the best parts of those rules and release the rest.
“To quote Mary Oliver: ‘What will we do with this one wild precious life?’ [...] That's definitely my hope with this book that maybe people will give some thought to. ‘Oh, okay. I see that maybe, maybe I can be brave enough to try to do things differently for a greater expression of selfhood.’”
Finding and expressing our selfhood does indeed take bravery, but as Margaret shows us in this memoir, it’s not necessarily cape and crown, all-capital BRAVE. Brave(ish) is more than enough.
I hope that you too will travel far, and wide, and deep within through this wonderful memoir and all Margaret shares with us in this conversation.
Thank you to She Writes Press for the review copy.
Bio: Margaret Davis Ghielmetti is a writer, "live lit" storyteller, solo performance artist, and photographer. She and her Swiss husband have lived on four continents and have visited nearly fifty countries. Those journeys inform her rallying cry ("The world is not my enemy!") and her creative work (including winning two StorySLAMs with the storytelling show, The Moth.)
Ghielmetti's solo show, “Fierce,” is about re-claiming her creative expression in mid-life . . . and she wrote Brave(ish): A Memoir of a Recovering Perfectionist to inspire readers that it’s never too late to learn to live our own lives – if we dare to let go of outdated roles and rules we thought kept us safe.
She also hopes to entertain readers with her adventures and mis-adventures abroad, and to share what each country taught her that she never would have learned on her own.
Proud to have been included in Newcity’s LIT 50 2020 (“Who really books in Chicago,”) Margaret is over the moon to have just had her book launch on October 1 with Chicago indie bookstore www.womenandchildrenfirst.com
Please visit www.margaretghielmetti.com to find video/audio of her stories, her Instagram photos, and links to purchase Brave(ish): A Memoir of a Recovering Perfectionist (which may be ordered through any bookseller, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.) What Margaret loves most is genuine connection with other human beings! She’d love to be in touch and to hear about your journey and how you experience the world.
Sincere thanks to Intralingo and Lisa Carter for this wonderful opportunity!
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Thank you for listening and please share your own experience of this interview, the topics, and of course this amazing book. Reach out! We’d love to hear from you.
Lisa Carter
Founder & Creative Director, Intralingo Inc.
WORLD TRAVEL – Interview with author Margaret Davis Ghielmetti