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Imagine a little girl, hiding behind a sofa, snuggled under her covers, or sitting on a rock in the forest, nestled among the trees.
Her eyes are closed. She’s turned on the theatre in her mind’s eye and sees the stories she tells herself—saving children from a flood, rescuing children from a devastating fire, fighting and winning a battle against giants… The stories help her live through trauma, abuse, abandonment, never feeling safe or loved or cared for. Years later, now a grown woman, I not only tell stories to myself, I tell them in memoirs, novels, plays, and essays. Both in the US and abroad, I have taught and led workshops in schools, universities, mental hospitals, prisons, recreational centers, battered women’s shelters, and staff development programs, always with the goal of helping participants rediscover and reclaim their creativity and imagination. I have used my experiences of powerlessness to create imaginary worlds where characters find ways to become empowered. The stories I tell, no matter the form, are about people, often women, who encounter “bumps in the road”. I’m interested in how characters face these bumps.
It's not about happily ever after
It’s about the journey to discover what they need to do, what they need to acknowledge, in order to make meaningful choices, to be the people they want to be. At the end of my novels and plays, characters know more about themselves, have faced and moved through fears, more ready to meet whatever challenges life presents.
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Nancy King's Latest
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Breaking the Silence
A memoir by Nancy King Nancy King, determined to learn the truth of her childhood and the heartbreaking effects it has had on her adult life, uncovers the secrets. Sees through the lies. Breaks the silence. Empowered by the stories she told herself as a child, she learns to use stories as part of her work as a university professor teaching theatre, drama, world literature, creative expression.
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