Lindy West: Life's too short to be ashamed of yourself or shamed by others
From slaying trolls on Twitter, writing as a columnist for The Guardian, to co-founding the social media campaign, Shout Your Abortion, Lindy West is fearless. But she wasn’t always that way.
West’s new memoir is “Shrill: Notes From A Loud Woman.” Memoirists often chronicle embarrassing experiences, but not everyone can do it with the humor and grit West is known for. She got her start at The Stranger and kept writing, because she’s good at it, and because life’s too short to be ashamed of yourself, or shamed by others.
“Shrill” exposes the stigmas associated with fatness, how culture often reinforces those perceptions, and the fearlessness she grew into by braving a lifelong cultural war against her body.
West spoke to a Town Hall Seattle audience on May 25, 2016. Her appearance was sponsored by Town Hall and University Book Store, as part of the Arts & Culture series. Ana Sofia Knauf recorded her talk.
Web Exclusive: Listen to Lindy West's full talk and Q&A below
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John O'Brien
Producer
John O’Brien is a KUOW newsroom producer. He works with the Morning Edition and All Things Considered teams to schedule, record, and edit interviews and stories on a variety of topics, from politics and public health to arts and culture. He learned to make radio in 2006 as an intern on KUOW’s The Conversation and is a former host of KUOW's Speakers Forum.
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