Running Wildly and Recklessly into Womanhood
Eliot, Maine, March 22, 2021 — Gina Troisi has spent much of her life looking for something that seemed unattainable – a sense of self and a sense of belonging. She shares her journey in a debut memoir, The Angle of Flickering Light, Vine Leaves Press, available on April 6, 2021. Troisi’s road has not been pretty. Her childhood was marked by parental deception and infidelity; and as is the case with many girls, she endlessly sought her father’s approval, always beyond reach. The book explores what it means for a girl to run wildly and recklessly into womanhood, clinging to any version of love, making temporary homes for herself again and again, before finally discovering what it means to become rooted. Along the way, she found solace in restlessness taking her from New Hampshire to California and beyond — drinking hallucinogenic mushroom tea, inhaling crushed pills and powders perching herself on the periphery of danger again and again.
A long-time constant in her life is her desire to write. “I have wanted to be a writer since the third grade. It sounds cliché, but that’s when I remember losing myself to what was called “the writing process,” a process I learned in the classroom and quickly came to love,” said Troisi. “Throughout my childhood and adolescence, I constantly wrote in journals and crafted poems and stories, and as an adult, I repeatedly took workshops out of the home of Nancy Eichhorn. Nancy, is a wonderful writer and person.” It was Eichhorn who encouraged Troisi to pursue an MFA in Creative Writing, which she earned through the Stonecoast MFA Program at The University of Southern Maine in 2007. Shortly after getting her MFA, she published her first piece — an essay. A long string of essays, poems and short stories followed. Much of her work earned awards.
“It’s funny, when I started writing most of this book, it was partly unintentional,” said Troisi. “Time and time again, I was compelled to write essays about my life–my childhood, my adolescence, and my early adult years–that would later become this book. I have always written to make sense of the human experience, and that’s what I was doing as I wrote these stand-alone essays.”
“I think many people can relate to the book, in one sense or another. We all grow in and out of versions of ourselves,” she said. “I think as writers it’s important to assess our choices, to look closely at the lives we have lived, and to understand and have empathy for others. I am always looking for the lesson. And oftentimes, writing is the only way I find it.”
Troisi wants readers to take away a message of hope from the book. “Even when we are struggling, dealing with grief and loneliness and despair, we are never truly alone. Most often, we can endure much more than we believe we can. I also hope that readers will take away the great reminder that through art, anything is possible,” she said.
Troisi currently lives in Eliot, Maine with her boyfriend of 15 years. Prior to moving to Maine, she lived and worked in Dover, New Hampshire for many years in the restaurant industry, and taught local writing workshops there. She taught and worked at Great Bay Community College in Portsmouth, NH and volunteered at Sexual Assault Support Services (now called Haven) through leading writing workshops for survivors. She has taught online writing classes at Southern New Hampshire University.
The Angle of Flickering Light is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org. Troisi is a member of the New Hampshire Writers’ Project.
