Laura Hillenbrand

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Source: laurahillenbrandbooks.com

Laura Hillenbrand is author of two awarding-winning, bestselling books: Seabiscuit: An American Legend, about a champion race horse who became a national legend during the Great Depression, and Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption, about a promising track Olympian who suffered years as a WWII POW in Japan.[1] Both books were adapted into aclaimed movies.[2][3]

Hillenbrand lives with myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS) and is open about her illness, writing a poignant essay in the The New Yorker about the illness onset and her long confinement as she slowly recovered.[4] When asked in a The New York Times interview the question so many fans (especially other people with ME) want to know, if she would ever write an autobiography to explain her experience with her illness, she answered: "I have to spend so much time being vigilant on my body and worrying about my body and suffering. So much of my own autobiography would be about my health, and I don’t know if I want to spend my professional life thinking about that. I write to escape my circumstances."[5]

Notable Quote[edit | edit source]

“Fatigue is what we experience, but it is what a match is to an atomic bomb.” [6]

Articles[edit | edit source]

  • 2014, "The Unbreakable Laura Hillenbrand," The New York Times By: Wil S. Hylton "Since 1987, Hillenbrand has been sick with chronic fatigue syndrome, which has mostly confined her indoors for the last quarter century."[8]
  • 2010, "Chronic Fatigue Syndrome: A Celebrated Author's Untold Tale" in Elle magazine by Aaron Gell.[9]
  • 2010, "Laura Hillenbrand releases new book while fighting chronic fatigue syndrome" The Washington Post By: Monica Hesse. "Then there are the more recent wins. The time she managed to take an entire shower standing up. The time she and her husband, Borden Flanagan, drove to the alley at the end of their block so she could see something other than the cemetery behind their yard, and the time, a few weeks later, that they drove all the way to Starbucks. Sat in the parking lot. Drove home."[10]
  • 2003, "A Sudden Illness," by Laura Hillenbrand, The New Yorker, Jul 7, 2003 issue, "Personal history about the writer’s experience with chronic fatigue syndrome."[11]

Talks & Interviews[edit | edit source]

HHS/CFSAC[edit | edit source]

Online presence[edit | edit source]

See Also[edit | edit source]

References[edit | edit source]