Sonya Lea (she/they) writes on memory and identity. Her memoir, Wondering Who You Are, (Tin House) about what happened after her husband lost the memory of their life, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Wondering has won awards and garnered praise in a number of publications including Oprah Magazine, People, and the BBC, who named it a “top ten book.” Her essays have appeared in Salon, The Southern Review, Brevity, Guernica, Ms. Magazine, The Prentice Hall College Reader, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and more.

Lea’s forthcoming book is BLOODLINES, a story about the last public execution in America, a legal lynching in Owensboro, Kentucky, where she was born.

Lea has worked as a house cleaner, a cook, an editor, and for museums and science centers. She creates retreats and teaches writing in North America. She teaches at Hugo House in Seattle, online at Lidia Yuknavitch’s Corporeal Writing, and she developed a pilot project to teach writing to women veterans through the Red Badge Project. She speaks at conferences, universities and festivals, including the Cork Writer’s Festival (Ireland) and the Association of Writers & Writing Programs. She is the recipient of an Artist Trust Award, two Canada Council Awards, and a grant from the Alberta Foundation for the Arts.

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast on sex, feminism and power that Lea created with performance artist/filmmaker Dylan Bandy, also her youngest child. Find us on Anchor and Soundcloud

Lea’s short film, EVERY BEAUTIFUL THING, won two awards for direction and several awards for score. Her cast, crew and donors were seventy percent women. She is an Academy Award Nicholl Fellowship Finalist in screenwriting.

You can follow her at Wanderland, her newsletter, for more on this journey.

Image by Dylan Bandy.