Jane’s talk is called, “Fiction and Film: The Winged Serpent and the Journey to Prajna-Paramita”
Reaching the “Wisdom of the Distant Shore” is synonymous with the search for and discovery of our individual manifestations of transcendence, or the universal quest for personal mythology. The act of fictionalizing personal history, including trauma, repressed memories, and/or emotions, allows an author/screenwriter to both unmake and examine situations from a protected distance, and to ultimately reframe experiences from a position of strength. Exploring established cognitive pathways and rerouting responses to triggers through the lens of archetypal psychology empowers writer, reader, and viewer, as they each witness the often painful separation of paired opposites, and celebrate their eventual reunification. The process of crafting a book/screenplay becomes a vehicle on the journey to Prajna-Paramita for the writer. For the audience, the finished product is a tangible incarnation of the Winged Serpent, present in multiple forms and providing catharsis, insight, and entertainment.
About Jane
Jane Alvey Harris is the author of the My Myth Trilogy, a hard-hitting, issue-driven contemporary account of a seventeen-year-old girl whose reality fractures when her childhood abuser re-enters her life. RIVEN, SECRET KEEPER, and PRIMED are fictionalized documentations of a survivor’s journey to make peace with her wounded egos and achieve self-acceptance. Jane writes that through the process of weaving her tale, “I realized I was laying my hands directly on the tattered pieces of a buried map leading to rich interior landscapes I’d never acknowledged or explored before because I considered them ugly, worthless, and humiliating.” Best-selling RIVEN and SECRET KEEPER, the first two books in the trilogy, have won multiple awards. More importantly, they have started an international dialogue about living with PTSD, and ways in which victims of childhood abuse can do more than survive, they can thrive. Book three, PRIMED, will be released in September of 2020. RIVEN has been optioned for a feature film.