Cynthia Blakeley in Conversation with Julie Sexeny

About the Book

Raised in a nineteenth-century saltbox house in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, Cynthia Blakeley was both surrounded by generations of immediate and extended family and isolated by the mysteries locked inside her affectionate yet elusive mother and short-fused father. While she and her sisters and cousins roamed the Outer Cape—drinking in the dunes, swimming in kettle ponds, and dancing in Provincetown—Blakeley also turned to the inner world of her journals as she contended with her own secrets and memories.

Over-identifying with her unconventional and artistic mother, Blakeley felt certain that the key to understanding her mother’s drinking and distractions, her generosity and easy forgiveness, was the unexplained absence of two of Blakeley’s half-siblings and their connection to her mother’s unhappy first marriage. Blakeley kept her distance, however, from her disciplinarian father. Though he took his daughters sailing and clamming and beachcombing, he was the chill to their mother’s warmth, the maker, not the breaker, of rules. Slipping through these dynamics in that small house and evocative landscape, Blakeley eventually crossed the bridge and left home, only to return later in search of the family stories that would help her decode her present.

Blakeley’s captivating memoir moves fluidly through time, grappling with the question of who owns a memory or secret and how our narrative choices not only describe but also shape and change us. In this insightful and poignant account of tenacious year-rounders on Cape Cod, Blakeley contends that making sense of ourselves is a collaborative affair, one that begins with understanding those we came from.

About the Author

Cynthia Blakeley received her PhD in interdisciplinary studies from Emory University, where she currently teaches courses on memoir, interdisciplinary research, and theories of dream interpretation. She has also worked as a freelance writer and editor of creative nonfiction, journalism, and academic works for over twenty-five years. The Innermost House: A Memoir (UMass Press) is her first book. To learn more, visit cynthiablakeley.com.

About the Conversation Partner

Julie Sexeny, an associate professor and the chair of English at Wofford College, received her PhD from Emory University in film studies and psychoanalytic studies. She teaches a wide array of courses, including screenwriting, creative nonfiction, gender studies, and filmmaking, and is the coordinator of Wofford’s Film and Digital Media Program.