**** Negotiating Challenges of Life Review by Rox Burkey
In her memoir, Angie Hawkins details her journey through family, friends, love, heartbreak, and inner growth. Ms. Hawkins tells the story with her inner feelings about life’s messy parts and small victories relatable to readers. Angie’s parents’ relationship and expectations for their daughter are shared with vivid descriptions to the point one can smell the cigarette smoke of her father.
Readers will see and meet Angie’s friends and lovers as she learns trust is an earned element, never to be taken for granted. The conversations and situations told have touches of humor while illustrating the emotional blows to Angie’s self-esteem with her climb to stability. Angie shows that cherished individuals cultivated the resiliency born within herself.
Angie Hawkins tells her story in a clear voice while highlighting the elements of humor, sarcasm, fear, doubt, and awe in all the right places. There were no glitches or issues with the audio. Hearing the poignant story in the voice of the author makes it real.
Ms. Hawkins’s susceptibilities, bravery, and learning permission to fight for herself are thought-provoking. The memoir leaves one with a sense of her embarking on the next phase of her life, knowing she will succeed. For Young Adult readers or listeners who want a real story from an individual who has fought for every bit of true happiness, Running in Slippers is for you.
About the Author
Angie Hawkins is a prolific writer, starting in fifth grade when she won the Young Author award in her elementary school’s annual book writing contest. As an adult, she was accepted into The Second City Chicago sketch comedy writing program, where her graduating class wrote and directed a show that ran on The Second City stage. She maintains a creative writing blog, “So…What Happened Here?” that creates backstories about random street findings. The corresponding Instagram account, @sowhathappenedhere, has amassed seven thousand engaged followers.
Her On the Corner of North and Wells story is featured on the Biograph website. And her written testimonial is featured on coach and author Kathy Caprino’s Most Powerful You sales page, mostpowerfulyou.com.
In addition to her print accomplishments, Angie has co-hosted two episodes of Bummin’ Around with Bob Schram, a YouTube series that highlights different neighborhoods in Milwaukee and Chicago. She has also performed live through improv and storytelling classes at The Second City Chicago and Improv Hawaii. Check out her local news feature here.
Angie has a B.S. in Finance from Indiana University Kelley School of Business. Her storytelling encroaches into her day job where she works in IT Operations. She has a passion for investigating data and a proven track record of proactively analyzing complex sets of data to tell a valuable story with a clear action plan.
Angie has moved from Chicago to Hawaii on her own, jumped out of a helicopter into the ocean Navy SEAL-style, bungee jumped, skydived, cliff jumped, and ran 16 marathons. In her free time, she writes, hikes, surfs, dances, practices fingernail art, is a member of Vibe Tribe, an invitation-only, virtual intuition community, is a member of Oak + Pine, a female entrepreneur society, and speaks at local events about the themes in Running in Slippers to encourage connection through vulnerability.
