My Novel Showed My Trauma. There Won't Be a Sequel. | Virginia Montanez | TEDxPittsburgh

NOTE FROM TED: While some viewers may find this talk helpful as a complementary approach, please do not look to this talk for mental health advice. This talk only represents the speaker's personal views and understanding of mindset and the brain. TEDx events are independently organized by volunteers. The guidelines we give TEDx organizers are described in more detail here: http://storage.ted.com/tedx/manuals/tedx_content_guidelines.pdf

Renowned humor writer and novelist Virginia Montanez reflects on how the writing process not only unveiled what she refers to as 'damage' but also played a role in overcoming it. Virginia Montanez is a humor writer, novelist, essayist and historian who once spent the day as one of the most-Googled names in the country while appearing as the lead story on CNN's homepage when she was fired from her nonprofit Pittsburgh job after revealing her identity as the writer of the popular humor site The Burgh Blog. Montanez went on to publish a successful follow-up blog about Pittsburgh and then became the humor columnist for Pittsburgh Magazine before leaving to focus on writing novels. Her debut novel Nothing. Everything. was published in 2023 by Brooklyn's Winding Road Stories.

She is the volunteer founder of Make Room for Kids at Mario Lemieux Foundation, a program that has placed hundreds of XBOXes in nearly every in-patient room at UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh.

She now writes a Pittsburgh history-focused column for Pittsburgh Magazine and has contributed essays to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In addition, she publishes a weekly newsletter, Breathing Space, via Substack.

She is the creator of the artifact-mapping project Pittsburgh Remains to be Seen.

Her awards include the "Blog of the Year" from the City and Regional Magazine Association for her work with Pittsburgh Magazine, as well as multiple Golden Quill nominations and wins.

May 30, 2014 was named "Virginia Montanez Day" in the City of Pittsburgh by Mayor Bill Peduto.

She is a history graduate student (remote) at UMass-Boston, a single mother of two teenagers, and has been profoundly hearing impaired since birth. 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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