Mimi Nichter: Give Yourself and Your Words the Time To Marinate
In this interview, author Mimi Nichter discusses how revisiting her memories through writing helped her write her new memoir, Hostage.
Mimi Nichter is a cultural and medical anthropologist, public speaker, and a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is the author or coauthor of four anthropology-related books and the recipient of the Margaret Mead Award and the George Foster Practicing Medical Anthropology Award. Her essays have appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, and Brevity. Learn more at MimiNichter.com, and follow her on Facebook and Instagram.
In this interview, Mimi discusses how revisiting her memories through writing helped her write her new memoir, Hostage, her hope for readers, and more.
Name: Mimi Nichter
Literary agent: Murray Weiss, Catalyst Literary Management
Book title: Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience
Publisher: Potomac Press, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press
Release date: March 1, 2026
Genre/category: Memoir
Previous titles: Fat Talk: What Girls and their Parents Say about Dieting; Lighting Up: The Rise of Social Smoking; A Filtered Life: Social Media on a College Campus
Elevator pitch: In September 1970, I was returning home from a summer in Israel when my plane was hijacked by armed members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and redirected to a remote desert region in Jordan. We sat on the plane for six days in sweltering heat without flushable toilets or running water. Most were sent home, but I, falsely accused of being an Israeli soldier, and thirty-one others, were held hostage in Amman, fearing for our lives as a violent civil war erupted around us. After many years, I realized that to fully heal I needed to explore how this trauma impacted my life.
What prompted you to write this book?
In the 1960s and 70s, it was not culturally appropriate to talk about personal trauma. Growing up, I was taught to pretend that everything was okay at home, when it definitely was not. I learned to keep things secret. After my hijacking, I quickly returned to college life as it was assumed I could adjust and move on. Plagued by terrifying memories, I silenced myself. For most of my life, I never mentioned the hijacking, not even in therapy. But over the years, memories of my experience would arise in startling detail and I wrote them down. As a cultural anthropologist, I knew how to write other people’s stories, and I finally decided it was time to write my own. Penning the book has helped me to find the voice of this lived experience, first on the page, and then in my life.
How long did it take to go from idea to publication? And did the idea change during the process?
I had the idea to write this book about twenty years ago, but I wasn’t ready to unpack the buried trauma. I feared what lay beneath; after all, I had avoided talking about it for years. During COVID, and after my retirement, I started reading my earlier scribblings and writings. This pile of memories served as a scaffolding that helped me build my book word by word. The world was in a vulnerable state that mirrored my own. It took me about two years to complete the first draft of the book, and the editing process took another two years. The book’s direction evolved especially after an early developmental edit helped me understand what to include and omit. Early drafts often contain enough material for more than one book!
Were there any surprises or learning moments in the publishing process for this title?
Lots of them! I learned that current events playing out on the world stage can be a critical factor when seeking publication. My agent was looking for a publisher during the hostage crisis in Gaza, which made it difficult because of the hot button issues of the current aggression between Israel and Palestine. Though editors liked my book, they were reluctant to sign it given the events occurring in the world and the divisiveness of the time. Eventually, it found the perfect home with Potomac Books, an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.
Were there any surprises in the writing process for this book?
The biggest learning experience, not exactly a surprise, was how much I needed to learn about craft to write a memoir. I was already a published author when I began writing this book. I had written three academic books and more than seventy-five journal articles. I was used to writing about other people, highlighting their voices, not my own. My early drafts, according to readers, were a bit clinical. I related the story but didn’t include enough of my feelings, my fears, and my hopes. It took me a long time to process the experience, to get in touch, and be able to go deeper. Writing in this style triggered a lot of emotions. Another surprise in the writing process was a suggestion to switch the tense of my book from past to present tense. I changed the whole manuscript. It has made a big difference in the tone of the book.
What do you hope readers will get out of your book?
Most readers will thankfully never be held hostage or be on a hijacked plane. I wanted to give readers a panoramic window into this experience, one that would bring them right on the plane with me, experiencing the smells, the hunger, the thirst, the fear, the constant state of unpredictability. As a hostage, I was stripped of my identity as a college student involved in the anti-war movement and objectified as a hated other. I hope this leads readers to think about the dangers of othering and divisiveness. I also hope it helps people recognize the importance of talking about trauma. Having been socialized into silence, I understand how damaging this can be to one’s ability to live fully.
If you could share one piece of advice with other writers, what would it be?
Each part of the writing process, from inception to writing to editing to querying to finding a publisher, carries its own challenges and rewards. Don’t be in a hurry to finish, enjoy the stage you are in. Believe in the unfolding of the process and give yourself and your words the time to marinate.
