Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Faith Eidse. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Faith, appreciate you joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

At age 8 I fled a massacre during Congo’s 1964 revolution, while separated from my family, and knew I had been spared for a purpose. I was reunited with my parents and sisters, Hope, Charity and Grace, and lived for weeks in a U. N. refugee camp. Again I felt my life was extraordinary. I wrote letters to cousins in Canada and vowed to remember the rare details. It felt like I was entrusted with a story of great meaning that I must tell. But also I was surrounded by other children with similar stories. Perhaps I would also collect and publish their stories too.

Faith, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I am founder and publisher at Faitheyes Press having experienced a range of publishing from university to major and small presses to self-publishing. I started writing as a child in Congo, entered journalism in high school, college and post-college, and expanded to environmental writing, fiction and non-fiction. Since obtaining my Ph.D. in creative writing from Florida State University (FSU), I have taught college writing, community workshops, and supported writing students at all stages.

At age 8 I fled the first massacre of Congo’s 1964 revolution. Separated from family for school, I felt terrified I would be left behind to face violence on my own. This launched my passion to tell my story and collect stories of other kids raised abroad in a mix of cultural enrichment, war trauma and multiple losses.

Sociologists called us Third Culture Kids (TCKs). We are kids with traveling childhoods who developed identity by mixing aspects of home and host cultures to create a unique third culture. My first published work was an edited collection by new and well-known writers, “Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global.”

I was then hired by a state environmental agency to write, “Voices of the Apalachicola,” which joined the Georgia-Florida water wars forum and became Florida’s oral history of 2006. My parents’ oral history followed, “Light the World,” as did another collection on growing up global, “Writing Out of Limbo.”

Next was my first published novel, “Healing Falls.” It was drawn from volunteering for six year in women’s prisons among mothers separated from their children (as I had been growing up). This brought me full circle to my award-winning memoir, “Deeper than African Soil.”

Along the way, I taught writing at Florida State and Barry universities for 20 years, as well as writing workshops in the community. Always I have supported writers to achieve their publishing visions.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

Let it be – I knew from childhood that I had to write. My life growing up in Congo, Canada and the U.S, was too full of adventure not to. The daughter of a Canadian linguist-theologian and Congo’s Mother Teresa, with three sisters (Hope, Charity and Grace), we ran out the savanna with our village friends, plunged into spring fed rivers, helped pound manioc into flour and played clapping games under rustling palms.

For me, writing letters to cousins in Canada, came as naturally as breathing. And so did reading my cousin’s letters to me. The life stories of others gripped me. I was changed for life by. “The Diary of Anne Frank.” She, too, was a 12-year-old who wanted to be a writer–and so became one–though her life ended tragically and too soon.

My first jobs out of college (BA English, Eastern Mennonite University, ’79) were in journalism. It was a good place to record and write the stories of others, first at The Carillon in Manitoba and then at The Virginia Gazette in Williamsburg, VA.

But after I married, started a family (two sons), and expanded into freelance journalism and creative writing, people close to me began challenging my choices. Nonetheless, I was accepted into FSU’s competitive creative writing graduate program and won the Kingsbury Award scholarship for my Master’s thesis memoir, “Deeper than African Soil.”

This helped me complete my PhD and become a writing instructor and adjunct professor. Yet critics on both sides of the family feared I would “drag their name through the mud.” I went to court and took back my maiden name, “Eidse.” It was only afterwards that an FSU prof asked why I didn’t spell it “Ides like ‘beware the Ides of March'”

Despite publishing other books, it took me twenty years to circle back to my Master’s thesis memoir, update it, and find a publisher (Masthof Press, 2023). It won two more awards, from Florida Authors and Publishers, and many positive reviews. So, although good criticism has often helped improve my writing, I have had to unlearn listening to negative criticism–people who just want to block my writing. I have learned to just “let ’em be”

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

Three times I pivoted in business, career or life:

First, in publishing, when I had taught myself to self-publish on Amazon, I learned how little support there is for self-published authors and decided to always hold out for a traditional contract–even if it’s with small presses. That is, negotiate to pay no money up front since the author still arranges and pays for most events, interviews and media coverage. I had also tried vanity (aka “hybrid”) publishing and knew even at low costs, $800-1200 up front, the author still starts selling in a hole.

Second, I pivoted in my writing vision when our granddaughter was born in Sweden on 11/11/2011, Since we lived so far away in Florida and longed to hold Morgan every day, I wrote a series of letters to “Mo.” I related how her parents “almost didn’t meet” and told about her dad’s childhood time travel–jumping through wormholes from his swing and riding dinosaurs from his treehouse. I told her in kid’s words, our family history and illustrated them with photos. These I compiled in a book for her to read one day.

According to Canada’s First Nations tradition, this is known as a seven generations oral history trust. That is, I as a grandparent, have an oral tradition to carry forward. I can remember the lore going back three generations to my great grandparents, and my grandchild helps me to see three generations forward. Through her eyes I can see into the next century.

More recently, I pivoted again when I read a friend’s imaginoir. It was a “what if” genre based on a critical juncture in life when one might have made a different decision. Jo Retal’s, “Heat,” spins around a Motown corporate kid transitioning to university and manhood via Detroit’s drug gangs. This got me writing about my own transition from Congo to Canada during my college freshman year.

I had enrolled close to home due to my sister’s suicide crisis instead of launching off to Northwestern in Chicago as I had wanted to. Instead, I permitted myself small town emancipations, such as riding with long-haired guys on Harleys or in Mustangs and Corvettes, and joining dank basement bands. How far might I have ventured if family crisis hadn’t intervened?

Contact Info:

• Website: https://faitheyesblog.wordpress.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/faith.eidse
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/faith-eidse-644a655/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/faithleap7
• Other: Amazon Author:
  https://www.amazon.com/stores/Faith-Eidse/author/B00IWT66YA?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Image Credits

Philip Kuhns photo

Liz Petersheim cover design