An Evening With Brianna Wiest and Bianca Sparacino

I just held a torch lit by my own desire and made my way down my own path.

Brianna Wiest Lectures

A photo of Brianna Wiest and Bianca Sparacino together at an event for the book The Pivot Year.

The event was hosted at the Fulton Theatre in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, as part of Brianna Wiest’s 2023 tour for her book, The Pivot Year. Brianna has a deep connection to Lancaster, having moved there as a new college graduate in the fall of 2013. It was in Lancaster where she wrote much of her best-selling book, 101 Essays That Will Change The Way You Think.

Brianna was joined on stage by Bianca Sparacino, where they engaged in a deep and insightful discussion about Brianna’s journey as a writer and the life lessons that can be extracted from her phenomenal success.

Contents

Discussion Highlights

Brianna and Bianca’s discussion was delivered to a sold out audience.

The lecture dives deep into Brianna’s career and how she became the writer she is today. From this more candid approach, the discussion unlocks valuable lessons for us all in career and life from Brianna’s journey. The following themes are covered:

  • Brianna’s arrival in Lancaster and writing journey
  • Success of 101 Essays and The Mountain Is You
  • Concept and impact of The Pivot Year
  • Inspiration for The Pivot Year
  • Personal growth through reading
  • Gratitude for support and success
  • Advice to younger self
  • Continuous adaptation and growth
  • Importance of letting go of ‘how’
  • Value of vulnerability

Memorable Quotes

Most of the time, the only things you lose are what was built for a person you no longer are.

Brianna Wiest

When enduring everything hard, everything painful, every challenge you think you’re never going to get through, everything you lose, everything that hurts, ask yourself — what is this trying to teach me? And if you ask yourself that over and over and over again and you are very very sincere in your pursuit of that answer, you will find kind of like a connection inside of you to a wisdom that is greater than you, but it’s in all of us. And I say this, all of the time, which is that anything you read in my books that you feel like a deep resonance and people say this all the time like, how did you know or this is the exact right time or, you know, it looks like this was written exactly for me and it’s like, well, it’s because it was written for me

Brianna Wiest

Sometimes when you feel like you don’t belong anywhere and like you don’t fit anywhere and like everything that you want seems like it’s never been done — that’s inside of you because you’re going to be a way shower. And everything you do to get yourself out of your known dark hole, you’re gonna write down as a guide and it’s going to get other people out.

Brianna Wiest

Show Notes