Garrard Conley: Boy Erased.
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 January 2019
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Garrard Conley is the author of the New York Times Best Selling memoir Boy Erased (https://amzn.to/2CioQ7k), now also a major motion picture (http://www.focusfeatures.com/boy-erased).
Growing up in a small town, immersed in a faith-based community, Conley survived conversion therapy before becoming a writer, activist and speaker (http://garrardconley.com/). He lectures at schools and venues across the country on radical compassion, writing through trauma, and growing up gay in the complicated South. He works with other activists to help end conversion therapy in the United States and abroad. He is also a returned Peace Corps volunteer, having served in Ukraine as an ESL instructor and HIV/AIDS educator.
Conley's writing can be found in The New York Times, TIME, VICE, CNN, BuzzFeed, Them, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Huffington Post, among other places, and he is currently at work on a novel about queer 18th century lives.
In today's conversation, we explore Garrard's personal journey, his career as a writer and advocate, and how it feels having your story told in a major motion picture featuring Nicole Kidman, Lucas Hedges and Russell Crowe.
-------------
Have you discovered your Sparketype yet? Take the Sparketype Assessment™ now. IT’S FREE (https://www.goodlifeproject.com/sparketypes/) and takes about 7-minutes to complete. At a minimum, it’ll open your eyes in a big way. It also just might change your life.
Thank you to our super cool brand partners. If you like the show, please support them - they help make the podcast possible.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | So as I sat down with my guest today, Gary Conley, a film starring Nicole Kidman, Russell |
| 0:08.8 | Crow, Lucas Hedges, and many others that told the story of his life was playing in theaters |
| 0:15.3 | around the country and around the world. |
| 0:16.9 | The name of that film is Boy Erased and it's based on a memoir that Gary wrote that actually |
| 0:22.7 | started out as an essay that he never thought would be seen by more than a handful of people |
| 0:28.8 | in a small classroom where he was studying and writing. |
| 0:32.2 | It tells the story also of his life growing up in the South and discovering his sexuality |
| 0:38.6 | and then going through a pretty horrific experience called conversion therapy. |
| 0:43.9 | And it's also, it has started a conversation about gender, identity, faith, family, love |
| 0:52.7 | that is deep, nuanced, challenging and really, really excited to be able to share my conversation |
| 1:00.0 | that takes you back into Gary's life and his own explorations and also brings the sort |
| 1:05.6 | of zoomed-alens forward and explores what happens when this story actually becomes public |
| 1:11.1 | first as an essay and then as a memoir. |
| 1:13.4 | And now on major screens around the world, especially for a person who is a pretty private |
| 1:20.0 | person, is a pretty introverted person and then becomes thrust into the role of public |
| 1:24.7 | person and to a certain extent activist for a point of view. |
| 1:28.3 | Really excited to share this with you. |
| 1:29.5 | I'm Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project. |
| 1:32.7 | I'm Feeling Like Like The Quality of the Pain is literally connected to the electrical |
| 1:43.6 | impulses currently causing the small and our clients delighted face. |
| 1:47.0 | I'm feeling like we're nearly done. |
| 1:48.4 | He's what I was going to say, Jen. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Jonathan Fields / Acast, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Jonathan Fields / Acast and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.