Beyond the Personal: Truth and Authenticity in Memoir
Explore, reflect, connect! Part of the 2025 Regional Writers Rise Festival, our Beyond the Personal author chat brought together memoirists Sam van Zweden and Shu-Ling Chua for a thoughtful conversation about truth, vulnerability, and storytelling.
It was an insightful and gentle session, one that prompted us to reflect on the layered craft of telling the stories of our lives, while also leaving us eager to dive into these authors’ work. Together, Sam and Shu-Ling explored how we navigate memory, represent ourselves and others with care, and create meaningful connections with readers through personal stories.
A huge thank you to Writers Victoria for sponsoring this event, and to Latrobe City Libraries for supporting it and providing a welcoming space for these important conversations.
Shu-Ling Chua is an essayist, critic and poet, whose work has appeared in Peril magazine, Lindsay, Meanjin and Asian American Writers’ Workshop, among others. Her debut essay collection, Echoes, was published in 2020.
Shu-Ling was shortlisted in the 2018 Woollahra Digital Literary Award, highly commended in the 2017 Feminartsy Memoir Prize and selected for the 2015 HARDCOPY manuscript development program. She has completed writing residencies at the Wheeler Centre and KSP Writers’ Centre
Sam van Zweden is a Melbourne-based writer interested in memory, food, mental health and the body. Her writing has been published by the Saturday Paper, The Guardian, ABC Life, Meanjin, The Big Issue, The Lifted Brow, Cordite, the Sydney Review of Books, The Wheeler Centre and others. Her debut book, Eating with my Mouth Open, won the 2019 KYD Unpublished Manuscript Award, and is available now.
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