as we were talking that night it's kind of like it turned into we wrote a part of it in america for her because she's not as often exposed to the end users of her  craft she's usually exposed to the editors and the publishers but she was got to participate and our book club would look at her work which was kind of neat so after that meeting and we invited her to join our library but class and once again we had a great conversation not just about her book but also about a book club and how it works so it's one of those people who is truly fascinated by people and very adept at getting others to speak about themselves  a few months later jean marie participated in a program at our library card reading writing and the creative process she was proud of a panel of writers and shared ideas about her process how she uses fictional techniques to tell her stories but unlike fiction writers who are characters are real live flesh and bone people she's one of those rare human beings as i said before who's just fascinated by people in their stories  the subject of her latest work in caution she likes to find out how things work to discover the truth behind the mystery and michael she's worked very hard to develop her god given talent natural curiosity to challenge and uncover bits and pieces of what it means to be human no wonder the two of them hit it off jean marie has been writing for national magazines for over twenty years she's had articles published in the washington post  smithsonian magazine and many others she is the author of seven books and serves as the director of the writing program at the university of pittsburgh where she teaches creative writing she's married and has two teenage daughters and lives on a farm in washington county she cried out some of her valuable time to join us tonight for which we're very grateful this evening i had the pleasure of introducing the author of the g q article game brain that served as the inspiration for the movie concussion and the author of the book concussion which tells us more about dr to share some thoughts about her craft as a writer and to share details about her latest work writing about dr bennett amala who jean marie is not a forensic pathologist or a doctor or concussion expert and she doesn't even play one on honestly was a began as a routine assignment that i didn't want to take on my editor to q is a friend of mine his name is andy were and he said what about this concussion issue that's going on into this and nine it was quite a lot of reporting in the new york times about the issue and the question of what was going on with n f l players and i wasn't that i'm not a sports writer i'm not a science writer and i'm like why are you asking me to write about this so it wasn't really a story for me frankly he said you know would you just please look into it and see if there's something something new we can say is there anything new i said there's nothing new to say it's been reported it's a place just look into it so i didn't understand the subject well enough to to be to know how to write about it so i started doing what i always do is i started the beginning and i started researching this in this case the scientific literature and i noticed this name dr  in the earliest scientific literature in two thousand and five i was the by discovered this disease c t e and he disappeared after two publications and i thought that was strange  like what are we mean the guy who figured it out is no longer around no one in new york times had talked about him none of the reporting and talking i thought i was just strange so i only became interested in the story when it was a mystery of what happened to b and then when i found him and found that he had been really ousted by the n f l and the scientific community to some degree and then i was like well i really have to write about him you know what happened and that's that's when it really became a story but i did the kind of stuff i do so when expanding your article into a book were there other ideas you considered before deciding to pursue and expand dr molly no i always wanted to i always wanted to write about bennett and everything i could possibly get closer and closer and closer to understand this guy because you have to see you know to me it was so fascinating that this guy who comes from nigeria knows nothing about america and knows nothing about american football he's a pathologist a neuropathologist working in this wretched morgan pittsburgh and he's taking brains i have to his apartment in penn hills because he's obsessed with trying to figure out how this one person died a crazy person you know mike webster who became quite demented at the end of his life and the story of his discovery i deeper what happened to who is he so for a book it was just a delight to expand upon that i went back to nigeria and met as you know medicine family and kind of traced his life from the beginning so i only wanted to do that i never wanted to do the widely reported n f l you know battle of the political battle that's part of it but to me it was a human story of strength in order to be able to tell a story so intimately i mean it really is a bit of it yeah it is trial of his life what he thought all that and we go into his level life i mean we  have you know at first that takes time and anybody out there who's ever written this in any kind of stories know it just takes time to develop a relationship or someone trust you and you know the i'm a writer i'm not his friend i have to be frank about that at the same time i'm asking him to like tell me all the details of his personal life it's an odd relationship but it's a relationship and over a period of time do you are not kind of trustworthy you know i'm not tricking him you know it's sort of a very frank kind of like this is the enterprise that we've taken on you are going to tell me about you and i'm going to be a translator for a writer audience and bring that to a wider audience and people had especially for him you know people have tried to steal his work people have tried to claim that they did what he did so but you have you know you have to know bennett to see that he's he's a guy who wants to trust he wants to believe the best in everyone he's an innocent so you know i felt for me it was a matter of not taking advantage of that very you know so on our next question in december two thousand and fifteen the movie concussion was released which i know i believe was an expansion of your article from two thousand and nine you tell us anything about your creative collaboration with peter landesman what was that was like sure sure peter landesman was both the director of the movie as well as the screenwriter and he i mean coincidentally they decided to shoot movie here in pittsburgh which was just wonderful because i could kind of just stop in any any day and be a part of it but also as the after of the article i was brought in as a consultant with primarily you know it depends on the the director how he wants to sometimes they want nothing to do with you it's just like give me the story and go away sometimes i just want to be a research and go away but piers a former journalist and a very collaborative guy and he just wanted to understand bennett same way i did so we had dinner after dinner after dinner you know just discussing bennett and right he does this and what how he why he moves like that and would he have done this kind of stuff and then will smith comes in on it and the same kinds of conversations so so many zing that the the level of detail that they brought to trying to really ring true and i think will smith nailed b father they called him he was a village chief and then it's lead story really starts with trying to impress his father you know it's maybe a kind of classic journey that way and bennett was the youngest and the second youngest excuse me of seven kids a large family born during the nigerian civil war very dramatic circumstances and then it was the brain of the of the children and his dad wanted him to become a doctor because that's what smart people do and bennett did not want to go to medical school he did not want to be a doctor but he felt he had to please his father so was her life was really trying to please his father so when i went back to nigeria with him this was in fact his father's funeral we were buried so it was a very sort of sensitive time as you can imagine but then it fled nigeria and a lot of ways it was fleeing his  but you better tell the truth and do what you believe in do what you believe in and you know and that was his his message and and so but it did and it kind of led him into a lot of trouble that that was kind of  influenced his work in what ways to his night cheery and culture of the civil war into which he was born do you think how do you think that influenced his work and then i guess we just wanted to hear what you think other qualities that were unique to him that helped him or perhaps hurt him in his pursuit of the truth when the first part i'll answer about that is just like the nigerian background i think when you a lot of peoples like out of the stand up to the n f l and all those you know those fancy rich men coming down on him and calling him names and it is honestly for bennett it was like oh my god i survived the civil war you kidding me these bozos read and understand them he didn't care about them it was like oh they had to drag this isn't enough and so i think a lot of that kind of immigrant experience really coming from those sort of desperate i mean the family they were refugees they were fleeing across across nigeria so i mean here they were starving i mean you know and they were deeply religious catholics and that was still is the is the foundation of work i mean he's very frank about it he's very he talks to dead people i mean he just does when he goes into the more he says how my going to help you we're going to we're going to release we're going to reset spirit here i mean y much about he's not afraid you know sort of really a weird thing to say in the medical community you talk to dead people you know i mean that's like you know this is these are my people so i think that you know he he talks to god he says he believes he's doing god's work in taking care of the did you know so it's a very kind of intimate really that he will talk about very very it's level it's wonderful to hear someone be able to articulate that without some kind of like embarrassment and yet at the same time i think because people found it it made him feel odd to them it made him an easy person to  marginalize so that when he you know comes out with his research first of all he's got this funny wacky name he's not attached to a university he's not attached to it no funding we never know asked for funding he paid for everything himself he just kind of is doing is like it's like where he come from you know have these all these fancy doctors and scientists doing all those workers like you there's this guy when he comes out  surgery and then they meet him and he's got a super thick accent you can hardly understand him he's talking about god he's talking about his friend the dead people and you know it i mean i know i'm so mad at this to me is normal now but when you first hit with bad it's like well you know he became very immediate easy to marginalise and he didn't he just didn't care he didn't he didn't try and turn himself into you know he was the picture of america except for the suit you know he didn't try and turn himself into anything different there's a real this is who i am this is what i found and it's a problem you these guys are getting brain damage and the killing themselves and you have are watching it and cheering isolation is loneliness that feels forced upon you like a punishment so this is aloneness you choose i think great things can come out of s that solitude but it shews as opposed to you know you're imprisoned by it but i think that that's a really interesting thing to bring that back foot forward now in terms of bennett's work because that was sweat it was for him working in choosing a kind of a very alone focused you know study he worked at his home with no one around privately without anyone you know in knowing what he was doing or looking over his shoulder or telling him what you know look for this or look for that it was just completely his own really i think i do think of it as a creative w very serious problem with depression that he was kind of always trying to conquer you know anyone who has suffered from that probably is always conquering it and i think that that experience when he met as he was saying mike webster on the on the slab in the morgue and heard his story of how he had this not more than more than depression but started out as depression and then went into  you know a severe mental decline i think then it connected with that you know i think he had a he had a natural sympathy for for you know what happens and he was so curious about the brain and the science of the brain he still is he wants to know why some people commit suicide and why some people don't depressed people what's the difference and he i think for some time thought he was sort of he wondered where he was in killing himself that's how little he was and some people do and he started studying suicide so that's always been an interest it continues to be an interest of his trying to understand if there's anything you know in the brain that he can these the n f l had a vested interest in not wanting this research brought to the public's attention your book in the movie showed that they attempted to block and discredit dr mahler's work did you personally experience any backlash personally professionally while researching the article or writing the book who said that personally the only thing that they did pretty they the league's response to me was pretty much what it was to bennett which is just ignore it that's pretty much the bit about the movie too they would just keep trying to pretend it doesn't exist but no sort of aggressive attack or anything like that it's been more about i think a p r nightmare for them to figure out how to manage it  and how to sort of a bit but you know it's more than just that they ignored the research in the book i really rocked through how it was a concerted effort to cremate research that refuted it that was the problem you had two groups of scientists paid by the n f l s funded scientists and then independen scientists of which bennett was just one of many and independent scientists were saying there was the serious situation going on with head trauma dementia and these guys that painted by the l scientists are saying actually we got this it's figured out it's not so bad it's not it's no big deal and they're both publishing in the same journal and why are these people getting w so that's kind of like ok connection what changes have you noted in in your you know i know you're not an expert in concussions as we talked about but have you noted any changes in professional youth programs as a result of the attention this issues right there so much in the youth sports absolutely i mean that's just anecdotal or what i what i hear from doing talks and from meeting people and just even watching the news the enough i mean obviously now they have the awareness so course they care to start looking at what we're doing with our program or use football programs and and other programs like that so i do see and i see a movement of awareness  you know you can say you know my question keeps i don't i have to say i look for some to back off i absolutely love football i read the steelers and love the game i get it i  we going to pay attention to it or we're just going to keep pretending it doesn't exist and it's one thing ok for these professional guys ever hear that word knowing i have a problem with that but when it comes to the kids stop stop specially what i do is they teach nonfiction so we find characters just like benetton just like those characters and in america and we we try and find out if were interested in telling their stories of course we always are just the way we think but i think it's the key for me to understanding the world and i think of it as almost like we're translators if you think about in this case in particular this research i have to keep underscoring this i did not it is not investigative work i didn't go in doing and find out something that nobody knew a lot so people knew this lots of scientists there was so fond of scientific literature it was them for anybody to find now when i was my own reading it was because it's boring scientific literature like it was going to read that stuff except for you know little small groups of interested parties but you bring in the storytellers and many of us are do the same thing we like know how come we haven't we convert that to something that regular people understand well the first thing you have to do is understand it because i'm a regular person so i'm just like one of you people i'm just translating what i'm reading and turning it into dramatizing it usually with choosing a character in wish to follow the story and in this case it was simple because it was such a great character but that's what it is it's a kind of a translating i when i was little to get out of things successful and then it was very kind of one of those things where in school where you it's like the only thing you're good at so you say well maybe i can make a living out of this you know but that's it it's just sort of like an inclination i think more than anything oh my gosh it's you should you should read this is that like the chief reader of  and it's a really really kind of a meditation on winter and in there you discover everything i mean he goes into that science of crystals everything from to the history of christmas to it's just  airship so we're all going to have like him in birds flying over our houses soon has anything to do with it so i kind of get into my aviation stage here so it's a profile of this crazy inventor from ukraine and i think that he's perhaps he's ease helped me understand the value of compassion and i guess i've become more compassionate thanks to him i think so how about you has he changed you since you got to well you have a question am actually we have different kinds of speeches and when i give a comic speech and i made up a comic speech and my teacher was sitting there and she had to get up and leave the  because she came back later on so you know right i left the room i said no she said i made her laugh so much that she had to go to the bathroom i am irish by the way irish can you really tell stories y interesting and you step back you know meeting the blank page it's the most terrifying thing for anybody and we have to do it and it's hard and you look at the blank page and you re one sentence that's it that's your entire drive for tonight when you go home you have one sentence and then tomorrow write another one and when you see after about three him better was that have you i just have one side note our granddaughter graduated from in english and she was so many rumors of you in your speaking in tongues stories she got a and it worked for the university of pittsburgh medical magazine and her first intern thing was to write obituaries but she researched for those she was telling me graham you don't know  you i my name is mina soccer my question is and you didn't speak to it today but i saw it in the movie do you think that a man whose life was a big turning point in his life also as many women are one on a plank and ship i'm just curious how many years it took you to write and as a busy professor mother farmer i'm just wondering how you sit down and  do this and months and that is read a vast for a project like this say because of the husband and the two like amazing kids ben let me just her way in my room and be the crazy lady in the attic it's you know there's a there's a strange process for ending anyone in any creative endeavor frankly joe's university in philadelphia and you need me to pick a letter that what you're saying but really answer to that is whatever i'm reading at the moment is the most influential thing that ever i ever read it really is true because you know you read and you rather have someone else put something together and you go  minute at the end of it you're like i'm never ready again is there anything that at the end of it and looking back you like why didn't i include that i wish i had thought of that at the time it would have included i mean like i think that's probably common to you just really critical of your own work and you can see it you can't see it clean like a writer does because you're you're remembering you know opportunities missed but it's not usually so it's not usually like research that i wish i could it's usually the form i kind of got better i just didn't  you know i keep almost reading a fiction but i have too many characters still that's all right is just like that how can i start making up characters when i have like fifteen stacked that back here that i still want to write about so to me i'm finding things that i want to you know to find more out of what happened and turn into a story hi how does bennett sell about the portrayal and drawing the light on him since he was so weak through the book you kept saying he was kind of going on the outskirts all the time so how  does he feel it's a really good question and i think for bennett you had to make a choice and yes he was a person who likes to sort of be on the outskirts and you know looking in from the outside that  can tell me about how much time they spent with each other and then also the process will smith getting from know you with the dialect and together and ok you have basement an amazing amount of time together and i think that there is a back to back after just sort of like a process but apparently the way will smith and if you've got a real person that you're doing you know his process the movie project that we named it after then it was because it's not just for benefit research it's for brain research as traumatic brain injury and areas of research around traumatic brain injury  it's started by people involved in the movie some of the the producers ridley scott and peter landesman the director bad ass so the university of pittsburgh partnering with with their brain institute and we're finding  is to raise funds to advance research kinds of traumatic brain injury because now of course what we're finding i'm not finding but you folks you'll hear the congressman talk about it someday now to to to be to be founded really frankly and so that's what we're raising funds for and there's a there's a web site is just under bet on our foundation dot org and if you want more information about it it's it's it's really rewarding to be involved in that we have a pretty robust program and i read of students interested it's wonderful it's so it's just fun you know we all gather and read each other's where and you know help each other get better and  ever time and it isn't just you know the gift thing is a little bit of a red herring because they're going after have gifted students who just don't have either the courage or the winner or the draft or the interest really in pursuing it and it's the ones who really won it and who are really curious and are willing to work for it that that you know they're just going to make it happen by god because they just love stories and they love reading and then to make it work now can't babble that's the pattern that's the pattern when they're taking never heading out of youth you sport you soccer you're saying i don't know i don't know the answer haven't i know is that we got it we got a fan the research so that we can figure this better than a scientist you know let's come up with a cure let's get a peer you can take so you don't get a tablet up in your brain and you can play anything you want but the fact of the matter is it's not just concussion it's constant head trauma we see is causing this this buildup of this protein that is making people as little or commit suicide so you know members have how are rock you know he's promoting pop warner football body he knows his research as well as anyone and his approach is you know this notion of taking the head out of the game you know not really savvy what that really means reduce the amount of exposure kids have to to you know constant head trauma and that's i mean you know that's that's that's a great start and that's what that's what pop warner has done you know sort of like an early because most of the most of the the trauma is during practice you know the game is just once a week usually so that's when approached when hammer thing has been a red herring i mean someone put it this way that misleading because that's not what we're tracking about blast they're finding that isn't as a matter of it's the constant hits that seem to be the real danger we have time for one more question and we have a lot of potential writings and just say you know what the public library does after writing groups that hopefully will continue our partnership with the university of pittsburgh and develop that a little bit but we do have writing groups for young also want to make sure that you have an opportunity to have a book if you would like to have a book on a craft or we're going to begin the line this way we're going to pick the table up on the stage refreshments outside there are also of course books for sale and  do wish you well and stay travel home so come visit us at the library thank you thank you