Renee M. Gilmore
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Interviews

June 2, 2025: Substack - Trio House Interview: Wayfinding - Sophie Baker


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​Praise for
Wayfinding: A Memoir


Wayfinding is a memoir that doesn’t flinch. In this memoir, Renee Gilmore journeys across landscapes, through memory, and into the aftermath of violence and abuse—with a sharp eye and an open heart. What emerges isn’t just a story of survival but a testament to the unexpected places healing can take root: at the Talladega Speedway, the casket showroom of a small-town funeral home, a booth in a roadside Waffle House, and most of all, in the uncharted places within ourselves. Both tender and bracing, this is a book that refuses easy answers, inviting readers to sit with discomfort, discovery, and the quiet power of resilience.

JEANNINE OUELETTE, author of The Part That Burns and director of Writing in the Dark



Renee Gilmore’s haunting memoir, Wayfinding, is about the booming act of refusing to live out projections of others. “I tried to be my own voice of reason,” Gilmore admits while maneuvering the tectonic shifts in her mind and body during an especially taxing panic attack. When chronicling her experience balancing an undiagnosed learning disability and going off to college (the first in her family to do so), Gilmore takes us on a journey in which she “simply had to become someone else…, create a new and improved persona, a new and improved me.” That she can write about these painful experiences without sacrificing her sense of wit, gift for incisive observation, and the need to make space for self-reflection is testament to Gilmore’s masterful gifts as a storyteller. Trauma often ruptures a person’s understanding of who they might be, of what they might have become. For some, that splitting feels endless, like watching tiny versions of yourself disassociate from one another. I strongly believe Gilmore’s Wayfinding has the power to speak to those villages of split selves. I strongly believe Gilmore’s Wayfinding will save lives.

ROY G. GUZMAN, author of Catrachos: Poems


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Copyright ©2025 Renee Gilmore
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