Life & Work with Meg Jerit

Hi Meg, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
I am a creative nonfiction writer, editor, poet and author of the commissioned children’s book The Moonies: Journey to the Total Solar Eclipse. I am a recent graduate of Columbia College Chicago’s Master’s of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction, and my thesis, River Talks, is a bildungsroman memoir set in Memphis, Tennessee—through which I am exploring concepts of love, attachment, and healing in a rare Southern gothic drama all its own: when I am sixteen, my therapist (who was also my mother’s therapist at the time) introduces me to his son, a grade below me. The son and I swiftly fell in love, and unbeknownst to us: my mother and his father, both married, were doing the same. Healing these wounds of heartbreak, betrayal, and abuses of power has produced a medicine within my heart that I hope to offer to readers in River Talks.

The narrative follows the symbolic, ecological and historical path of the Mississippi River as an exploration of the self as well as our unity, our connection with place and meaning-making across time and space, and the symbolic reflections between our inner and outer worlds.

In order to create justice and peace in our lives and in the lives of others, we must be resolute in our commitment to love and truth, which involves really, deeply understanding what those words actually mean in ourselves and in our world. Learning how to trust again, and what it means to be human are all part of my process. I believe my responsibility as a writer is to express all that the miracle of love expresses through me. Writing has offered me the instruments to not only find myself, but to empower myself through creativity’s infinite potential which is divinity itself. This is a gift that I hope my story will impart to others.

Writing led me to the beautiful campus of Rhodes College where I discovered the nexus of creative nonfiction’s possibilities and met invaluable mentors. After graduating, I moved to Chicago to earn my master’s with Columbia College Chicago, where I committed wholeheartedly to the path of the artist within a community of incredible poets and writers. Most recently, writing opened the door for me to attend Kenyon College’s residential summer workshop where I refined my voice and learned from amazing writers across the nation, including my workshop leader, the highly acclaimed Native memoirist, Terese Marie Mailhot, who taught through both word and embodiment the meaning of love and justice in literary symphony. All throughout this path, love has been my focus and my purpose. My story has gone through many phases in its telling, and I am so grateful for the voices of authors, mentors, strangers, friends, and family who have encouraged me to keep carving this book into being.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
This is a story that begins with my own deeply muddled mental health that transforms through these experiences into mental healing. Readers will follow my battle to accept myself as I develop authentic self love, overcoming the illusory shame of obsessive-compulsive disorder and excoriation disorder, also known as dermatillomania.

With these exacerbated issues of control, or lack thereof, I suffered from an eating disorder but was lucky enough to go to a great rehabilitation center in Miami in 2018. This provided the reset I needed to return to my inner voice. In 2019, another obstacle arose: I was assaulted in Memphis—downtown in broad daylight. To some, the man that broke my arm was a villain. To me: the unhealed history beneath our feet was the real culprit. By the time the pandemic hit, navigating obstacles simply felt like part of the flow.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
You can keep up with me on instagram (@megitate) or via my website megjerit.com. My pieces can be found in Adelaide International Literary Magazine, Allium: A Journal of Poetry & Prose, The Southwestern Review, and The Commercial Appeal. I have also commissioned a children’s book for the upcoming eclipses. My work is often hybrid, blending poetry and prose in essays, poems, short stories, and memoir. My subjects range from exploratory concepts of the Divine to delving into concepts of critical race theory. And I am always returning to one of my heart’s focal points: Memphis. I am continuously drawn to both capture her beauty and to advocate for the elevation of her needs and the voices of her people.

All of my writing originates in truth, the real—which I consider to be Love’s reality. I view love as the real, the actual, and what allows us to access the truest form of truth. Telling my story has afforded me opportunities to create my own justice. This is a tool and resource that I want to share with as many people as possible. In order to help heal our world and the systems around us, we have to begin with healing our relationship with the self. It is through this healing that we see exactly how interconnected we all are, and how powerful our voices can truly be when we transform our brokenness into our breaking free.