Sonya Huber talks health care at True Story

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The latest installment of the True Story reading series goes down at Kavarna this week, featuring work from Sonya Huber, Jason Mott, and Randy Osborne. The creative non-fiction reading series brings wordsmiths together to dish stories of the factual variety, like a more literary This American Life or Moth. Those readers who caught our annual Fiction Contest issue should recognize True Story co-founder Dionne Irving, who penned the funny and unforgettable "Jesus Stalks."

Sonya Huber's latest book is Cover Me, a memoir recounting the difficulties of navigating and surviving our less-than-ideal health care industry. Huber teaches in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Ashland University as well as in the Department of Writing and Linguistics at Georgia Southern University. We caught up with her earlier this week to ask her a few questions about writing and health care.

What has your experience with getting health care coverage been? What led you to write about it?

I wrote about health insurance because, as a writer, I have had quite a few periods of freelancing where I needed to find and pay for my own healthcare. Although freelancing and contract work are seen as wonderful solutions in corporate America, it's rarely sustainable from the freelancer's side because of the healthcare costs. Once I wanted to have a baby, the problem was infinitely more complicated. I started collecting journal entries of focused rage. I decided to write about it because the combination of money and our bodies is very taboo, and I'm drawn to those off-limits subjects. I just want the system to change so that people don't have to live under this kind of crushing pressure.