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RISKING EXPOSURE: The Creative Life | Elizabeth Winthrop | TEDxTraverseCity

2,193 views · Published 22 June 2017 · 16:02 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: TEDx Talks · 2017 · Nonprofits & Activism

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"To be a writer demands a certain kind of courage because you're facing the possibility of failure every time you start. It's the nature of the business that even if your book gets published and the reviewers praise you to the skies, the end product will never be all that you hoped for when you began. That longing to recapture the early version of the last story is what lures you into starting the next one." Elizabeth Winthrop says to follow where the creative urges take you.

ELIZABETH WINTHROP (www.elizabethwinthrop.com), the author of over sixty works of fiction for all ages, describes herself first and foremost as a storyteller.  Writing as Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop, she has published an e-book memoir piece entitled Don’t Knock Unless You’re Bleeding, Growing up in Cold War Washington, which hints at the underground life she lived as the daughter of a famous journalist during the McCarthy era. She tells the story in more detail in her current project, a memoir-in-progress, entitled The Daughter of Spies. In this book, she views her family history through the lens of her relationship with her mother, a British war bride who, at the age of eighteen, married an American parachutist who would become the world-renowned, syndicated columnist, Stewart Alsop. Even though she has spent a lifetime creating stories for readers of all ages, Winthrop has found the story of her own life to be the hardest one to tell.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

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