Book and Film Club - Towards The Light

Please join us for a special Story Summit Book & Film Club Table Read featuring Author Deborah Svec-Carstens and her debut memoir, Toward the Light: A Year in Paris.

Deborah Svec-Carstens, JD, MTS, is a writer, book coach, spiritual director, and former lawyer whose work explores healing after trauma, embodiment, and spirituality. Her debut memoir, Toward the Light: A Year in Paris (September 2026), traces her search for meaning and connection in the months after a traumatic assault in Paris in her early twenties. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in bioStories, the Brevity blog, the Des Moines Register, Ember & Vine Nonfiction Anthology, This Is Not Your Mother's Eating Disorder: An Anthology, and There's Nothing a Chocolate Chip Cookie Can't Fix. Her work has received recognition from Writer's Digest, WOW! Women on Writing, and Memoir Magazine.

During this session, Deborah will join us for an intimate evening conversation about the creative and emotional work behind bringing Toward the Light to life, and what it takes to transform a deeply personal story of trauma and healing into a resonant, page-turning memoir. She'll share her writing process, the reflective work that shaped the book, and what she discovered about voice, vulnerability, and honoring her own story on the page. We'll also explore what it looks like to write from a place of healing rather than only pain, how her background as a spiritual director and book coach shapes the way she guides others through their own stories, and why sharing our hardest experiences can become an act of connection and reclamation.

You can buy Siobhan's book here:

• Amazon: To Be Added Soon

We're pleased to present this special free event as part of our Story Summit Book & Film Club, celebrating Summiteers and their writing.

This event is free. Please register for the Zoom link.