BySonya Lea

Sonya Lea's memoir, Wondering Who You Are (July 2015/Tin House), is about her marriage after her husband lost the memory of his life. Excerpts from the book have received an international memoir prize and an Artist Trust Award. Lea’s essays and interviews have appeared in Salon, The Southern Review, Brevity, Cold Mountain Review, Tricycle, The Prentice Hall College Reader, The Rumpus, and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Lea mentors writers privately, and teaches at Hugo House in Seattle. She is leading a pilot project to teach writing to women veterans through the Red Badge Project. Lea has received screenwriting awards, including placing in the Academy Award's Nicholl Fellowship. She directed her first short film, due in festivals in 2015. Originally from Kentucky, she lives in Seattle, Washington.

  1. The Give-Away: On Memory, Marriage and Making Things Right

    BySonya Lea

    in The Butter

    In the twenty-third year of our marriage, my husband went into surgery for a rare cancer, and came out without any memory of our life. In the hospital that night, gallons of blood pooled inside his body while I watched, trying to compel the nurse to call for a transfusion. After an emergency second surgery, the bleeding was stopped, as was the cancer. But the man he had been never returned. When Richard woke up,…

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