Texting With a Writer: Alice Driver

Hello, and welcome to the monthly edition of Texting With a Writer, where I share with you text messages I’ve exchanged with fellow writers about the challenges we face. I reached out to Alice Driver, a nonfiction narrative writer from the Ozark Mountains in Arkansas who is also behind Driver on Substack. I reached out to Alice to check in on her, knowing that she’s working on an emotionally difficult manuscript, but it turns out she’s working on two books at the same time!

The daughter of a potter and a weaver, Alice attended Berea College in rural Kentucky, founded in 1855 to educate freed slaves and students with limited economic resources. She and I connected on Twitter, one a fan and follower of the other’s work. We finally met in person last March, after Alice came to the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, where I teach, to talk about her work covering women and LGBTQ+ people in the U.S., Mexico and Central America. She was my first overnight guest in New York, where I moved to last summer, and has been approved by my child and our cat as an official member of our tight inner-circle.

Here is my conversation with Alice. Enjoy!