Following Feeling to Find Your Structure, with Hollay Ghadery

Send us a text! We'd love to hear your thoughts on the show.

What if the truest way to write your story is to follow feeling instead of chronology? 

In this episode of The Resilient Writers Radio Show, I’m joined by award-winning Iranian-Canadian author Hollay Ghadery, whose work fearlessly crosses genres: memoir, poetry, flash fiction, and even a novel narrated by a sock puppet.

Hollay’s debut memoir Fuse won the 2023 Canadian Book Club Award for Nonfiction/Memoir, and it’s unlike anything you’ve ever read. Rather than laying out her life in neat order, she trusted her own non-linear way of experiencing memory. 

For Hollay, moments bleed into each other like inkblots on a page, and she honored that in her book. The result? A layered, fragmented form that feels truer than any straight-line telling could.

She also shares how writing changed when she got sober. For years she produced work while living in addiction, but it wasn’t until sobriety that she found the discipline to sit, revise, and shape her words with clarity. Her message is refreshingly down-to-earth: writing isn’t about waiting for a magical state to arrive—it’s about showing up and doing the work, imperfectly but consistently.

Since then, Hollay has released the poetry collection Rebellion Box and the flash-fiction collection Widow Fantasies. And coming in 2026, her debut novel The Unravelling of Ou—a playful, fierce, and absurd meditation on patriarchy, joy, and queer identity, told entirely through the voice of a sock puppet named Ecology Paul. 

As Hollay explains, the puppet narrator was no gimmick: it’s the most honest way she knows to tell this story, bypassing shame and revealing truths we might otherwise hide.

Our conversation also explores the realities of publishing. Hollay loves small presses, where collaboration feels intimate and books are treated as art objects. She talks about the highs and lows of awards season, and why it’s essential to celebrate every win—whether it’s a longlist mention or a kind note from a reader. One of her favorite lessons? “It means something to win, but it doesn’t mean anything not to win.”

Hollay practices what she calls “sympathetic joy”: celebrating other writers’ successes without letting envy creep in. She reminds us that another person’s achievement doesn’t take anything away from our own path. If you stay in your lane, there’s no traffic.

If you need a reminder that your quirks, your feelings, and even your sock puppets belong on the page, this episode is for you. Hollay’s wisdom is equal parts candid, funny, and deeply encouraging.