Author Rita Zoey Chin discusses creativity and healing, Sept. 10 & 11

Rita Zoey Chin, author of Let the Tornado Come, comes to Asheville for two events. On Thursday, Sept. 10, she’ll present her memoir at Malaprop’s. On Friday, Sept. 11, she’ll discuss creativity and healing as the keynote speaker at the Aurora Studio art opening.

Press release from Jill Seigel PR:

Rita survived abusive parents, drug addiction, and life on the streets as a runaway since the age of 11, to earn a masters degree, become an award-winning poet, mentor teenage girls, and find the love and stability of a good man. But soon after moving with her husband to a bucolic suburb, Rita started having panic attacks so debilitating she couldn’t leave the house. The trauma of her past refused to lie dormant. As her panic attacks increased in severity and frequency, Rita tried everything from cognitive behavioral therapy to cooking and pottery classes to an Oprah-approved healer to various psychiatrists and therapists. But it was not until she met a horse named Claret—damaged and skittish in his own way—that she could finally heal. In LET THE TORNADO COME, Rita pulls herself up out of the dark and discovers that the greatest freedom lies not in running from, but turning toward, those things that frighten us most.

First excerpted in Marie Claire, LET THE TORNADO COME interweaves three narratives: Rita’s childhood as a runaway, her struggle as an adult with crippling panic attacks, and her redemptive relationship with her horse, Claret. A Boston Globe Bestseller and an Elle Readers Prize pick, it was a Kirkus Reviews “Summer Reads” selection and one of Flavorwire’s “10 Nonfiction Books That Will Make You Smarter.” PW called it “luminous,” Kirkus described it as, “A candid, graceful testimony to remarkable resilience,” while the Huffington Post called it, “A near euphoric ode to the human spirit.”