Overview: Amanda E.K. is a writer and filmmaker, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Suspect Press, a memoirist about purity culture and an exvangelical.
In this conversation, Amanda talks about her fundamentalist evangelical upbringing, purity culture, rapture anxiety and religious trauma syndrome. We also talk about when she started to question the faith, and about eventually coming into her own truths as an atheist and a self-described “queer polyamorous nonbinary womxn” in a loving heterosexual marriage. Among other things, like Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and Amanda’s forthcoming memoir. These thing and more in this episode of the Humanitou Podcast.
Also on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google and other players.
EP 105 SHOW NOTES, LINKS & TRANSCRIPT*
Connect with Amanda E.K.
Website: amandaekwriter.com
Amanda E.K. on Instagram: @amanda.ek.writer
Glass Cactus Productions on Instagram: @glasscactus_prods
References & Links
Synopsis of “Purity Culture,” a forthcoming memoir by Amanda E.K.
Suspect Press: suspectpress.com
Video: “My Teenage Limits When With A Guy”
Connect with Adam Williams / Humanitou:
Humanitou on Instagram: @humanitou
Subscribe: Humanitou Newsletter
Photography
Provided by: Amanda E.K.
Intro/Outro Music
“Tupac Lives” by John Bartmann | freemusicarchive.org
*Full transcript coming soon.
INTRO TRANSCRIPT
Welcome to Humanitou. I’m Adam Williams, creator and host of this podcast series about humanness and creativity.
Today, I’m talking with Amanda E.K., writer and editor, publisher and filmmaker, memoirist about purity culture and exvangelical.
But before we get into an hour of Amanda sharing so honestly her humanness and creativity, I want you to consider this question: How do you live humanness and creativity in your life?
Also, something that I almost always leave until the very end of the episode, is how you can help me and Humanitou continue to cultivate a more thoughtful, kind and creative world. Three ways:
- Rating this podcast on iTunes/Apple Podcasts and on other players helps the algorithms of our digital lives know what’s worth promoting.
- Spread the word about this podcast on your social media pages and by old fashioned just telling your family and friends.
- You can “give a buck” to help sustain Humanitou by going to the Support page on the website, at humanitou.com.
Now, back to the amazing conversation at hand with Amanda E.K.
Amanda grew up as an only child in a fundamentalist evangelical family. She turned to the pages of her diaries, starting at age 7, in which she documented her thoughts and questions that she feared were too sinful to say out loud.
As a pre-teen, she wrote a lot about her boy-crazy disposition … even when attending purity retreats, weekends designed to repress and redirect the natural urges of such affectionate ideas.
In fact, as a side note: You can go to her YouTube channel (linked in the show notes on the Humanitou website), where she’s published short videos of her reading some of those youthful diary entries. She reads, for example, the outline she wrote at 15 years old to set her physical limitations when hanging out with a boy.
In this conversation, we talk about Amanda’s first purity retreat experience, at 12 years old. And she tells of the “rapture anxiety” that she felt at being away from home — and the recurring nightmares rooted in that anxiety that she still has.
We talk about how it was at a religious Christian college, surrounded by fellow 18-year-olds who were “on fire for Jesus,” that she started seeing cracks in the evangelical truths that she’d been given.
We also talk a lot about Amanda’s personal journey, peeling back the layers of religious trauma syndrome, and uncovering her own sense of truth and identity that are very much not in line with the fundamentals of evangelicalism.
Now … I’ve said all this, and haven’t even talked about Amanda’s path out of small-town Iowa to Denver, Colorado, or about how she came to be the owner and editor-in-chief of the highly regarded literary and art publication there, Suspect Press. Or a number of other things. But we will. Now.
Here it is, my conversation with Amanda E.K.
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Listen on Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Stitcher, YouTube, Google or another podcast player.
