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Britt Tisdale

@brittalive

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1980

following

❤️ psychotherapist (LMHC)
✏️ MFA in fiction
📚 writing about women breaking free
📍 FL & NYC

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Welcome to MMQA, Britt Tisdale! 🎉

Britt Tisdale is a licensed psychotherapist with an MFA in fiction who writes about women breaking free. Her essay “The Women Who Taught Me to Be a Tradwife” recently appeared at The Cut. Her fiction and essays have been published in The Rumpus, Salon, storySouth, Pleiades, Sonora Review, and (forthcoming) Playboy. A fellow of Hambidge Center, Wedgwood Circle, and Buinho Creative Hub, she has received awards from Bellingham Review, Ruminate, and the Royal Palm Literary Award. A lifelong student of the creative process, Britt has taught for Rollins College, Abroad Writers Conference, and Poets & Writers Magazine. She lives with her second husband, Bill, in Florida and New York City. Together they have a blended family of five adult children.

Represented by Ashley Lopez

Photo credit: Sylvie Rosokoff by @brittalive

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3 months ago

“The Women Who Taught Me to Be a Tradwife.
As pastors’ wives, we were supposed to provide endless support—even when it meant covering up abuse.”

Thank you to @thecut @nymag for the opportunity to tell my story. Special thanks to Executive Editor Marisa Carroll whose close collaboration, across several months, brought greater clarity.

Toxic loyalty is a powerful force that keeps us from speaking up. I’m indebted to @cherylstrayed and @elizabeth_gilbert_writer , both of whom offered workshops @omegainstitute — about how being brave makes you braver, and choosing the path of curiosity over the path of fear ❤️

#tradwives #domesticviolence #divorce #spiritualabuse by @brittalive

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4 months ago

The truest thing I’ve yet written is fiction ✏️

This story is dedicated to everyone out there messily dating after divorce. To anyone who braved leaving when it was easier to stay. And especially to my girlfriends who witnessed me having my 20s in my 30s, my wingwomen on the revolving dance floor at Downtown Disney’s Pleasure Island—the perfect place to get your groove back.

Thank you to @roxanegay74 & @debbiemillman @the_rumpus ❤️ Your “We love it” in my inbox made my year in writing. Thanks also to @awestenfeld whose encouraging questions deepened my thinking.

Link to the story in my bio! 💃🏻

#lifeafterdivorce #divorce #spiritualabuse #firstwivesclub by @brittalive

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7 months ago

Under Story 💫

Are you reading the @gmabookclub & @barnesandnoble September pick + national bestseller Under Story by @chloekbenjamin ? Perfect for apple-picking season and settling in to listen with knitting & a pumpkin-spice latte 🍎 A story of love, grief, & second chances, with Chloe’s signature mystical curiosity and eye for detail. If you loved The Immortalists, this time Chloe’s taking us to another dimension 💫

So exciting to be at the NYC launch @bnupperws , meet Chloe’s team @putnambooks & see friends from @kauaiwritersconference including my superstar teacher @jeankwokauthor 💫

#bookstagram #amreading #chloebenjamin #understory taken in Barnes & Noble Upper West Side by @brittalive

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24 days ago

👑

#flanneryoconnor #womenwriters #southernfiction by @brittalive

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a month ago

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2 months ago

spicy vacation read 🔥

📕 Helpless by @jessicaknollauthor

I read on a Kindle Paperwhite only for travel. I’m a total Luddite/reluctant convert, but I’ve found it removes the stress—yes, actual stress bc it’s another packing decision—over, will I finish this book on my trip & need another? What if I’m left without a book? How would I even go to sleep? I don’t otherwise use a tablet, so this works for me. It holds a charge forever and isn’t lit like a computer screen. Plus I used to travel with a reading light, which I no longer need.

What about you? I’m truly curious who reads in print vs. e-book vs. audio, and for what categories? I typically only listen to nonfiction on audio, especially memoirs read by the author, but that’s starting to change.

What’s left on your summer tbr? 📚

#bookstagram #bookrecs #amreading #bookshelf by @brittalive

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2 months ago

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”

~Terry Pratchett, from the novel A Hat Full of Sky

#herosjourney #narrative #travelwriting #writers by @brittalive

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2 months ago

The Crazy Rich Asians tour of Singapore 💫

Our tour guide was so proud of the @kevinkwanbooks book, and especially the film adaptation that features a historic, nearly all-Asian cast. Raffles Hotel, where Rachel & Nick stay in the movie, opened in 1887 and originated the Singapore Sling (shown here kindly made in zero proof). I’ll take you straight to a hawkers food hall, Rachel & Nick’s destination after deplaning from the 18-hour flight from New York. Our destination: straight to bed. We stood in line for chicken & rice from a Michelin-starred stall, and it was … fine?

One of the best experiences was watching fireworks over the Singapore River from the Marina Bay Sands hotel—the building with a boat on top, location of Rachel & Nick’s engagement party, with a view of the Supertree Grove. We briefly visited Gardens by the Bay then switched to the less Disneyfied Singapore Botanic Gardens.

I never got to try kaya toast, but it’s so popular it’s a Starbucks latte flavor. Kaya is a sweet coconut & egg jam.

Singapore is truly remarkable for its city planning. #soimarriedacanadian returned with three books on the island’s complicated history.

#singapore #aapiwriters #kevinkwan #crazyrichasians taken in Singapore by @brittalive

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2 months ago

Bali 🌴

I’ve been accused of wanting to visit Bali just for the swing. Me pre-trip: Does everyone pack those long dresses? Surely they can’t all fit them in their suitcases. Me at the swing: picking dress from rack, herded into changing room.

To celebrate our tenth anniversary, #soimarriedacanadian and I stayed inland near Ubud, where they say, “Welcome to the jungle,” and mean it. I ate the same breakfast every morning, granola with dragon fruit, papaya, & shaved coconut. We got slightly room-service shamed like, are you ever emerging from the villa? This villa you gave us beside a river, w/ only a few unadvertised white-water rafters hurtling past? We didn’t want to leave.

We did venture out to tour the rice terraces, monkey forest, several temples, and the luwak coffee plantation. If you, like me, are new to luwak, the production of this very desirable, pricey coffee involves a mongoose digesting (!) and excreting (!!) the beans before an unfortunate coffee artisan retrieves said beans for roasting.

We traveled through Singapore, an 18-hour flight from New York. That’s basically eat, watch a movie, sleep; eat, watch a movie, sleep; then you’ve only got six hours left. I’ll post separately about Singapore, also excellent and, in many ways, the opposite of Bali 🌴

#travel #bali #travelgram #travelwriters taken in Ubud, Bali, Indonesia by @brittalive

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2 months ago

Ten years ❤️

#weddinganniversary #tenthanniversary #secondmarriage by @brittalive

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3 months ago

Had the great pleasure of spending last week in the mountains at Aspen Summer Words @aspenwords ⛰️

I was in the hybrid fiction/nonfiction/autofiction (aka “what the hell am I writing”) workshop with @hannahpittard , author of the recent novel If You Love It, Let It Kill You, featuring a talking cat 😻, that’s how you know it’s fiction; as well as We Are Too Many: A Memoir [Kind Of]. Highly recommend listening to the memoir, read by Hannah!

Workshops at Aspen Summer Words are juried based on a blind submission process. No names, just pages. If you’ve wanted to try your hand at writing but haven’t had much experience, this provides a nice open door. I read somewhere that Joyce Carol Oates would regularly submit stories to literary journals under other names, just to make sure she’s “still got it.” Don’t you want to know her pen names?

Shown here:
✅ proof of hike
✅ proof of @kemosabe1990 (no hats were bought)
✅ proof of rodeo
all outside my usual wheelhouse & so fun ⛰️

Thank you @hannahpittard & my workshop group + @aspenwords director @adriennebrodeur for an excellent week!

#writersofinstagram #writingworkshop #aspen #amwri̇ti̇ng taken in Aspen/Snowmass- Colorado, USA by @brittalive

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4 months ago