Women In Horror Month 2024 : An Interview with Linda Watkins
What inspired you to start writing? I’ve been writing in some fashion or other ever since I was a kid. My older sister and I used to write scripts (mostly parodies) for some of the more popular TV shows of the day. When I got older, I wrote poems or songs for my family or myself. In my work for the Chairman of the Department of Pediatrics at Stanford, I used my writing talent to write “long forms.” These were documents that were used for appointments and promotions in the professoriate. My boss hated writing them, so I would draft…
This month on Holistic Horrors we take a brief look at the role of poetry in promoting well-being and connectiveness. Numerous studies suggest that this is the case. For example, in their 2018 study examining the value of writing poetry as a “means to help people living with chronic pain to explore and express their narratives in their own unique way”, researchers Hovey, Khayat, and Feig concluded that “to write cathartic poetry means bringing into presence our inner reflective thinking, emotions, and self-empathy to help ourselves and others who suffer alongside us.”