Latest news with #impostorSyndrome
Wall Street Journal
31-05-2025
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
She Always Felt Like an Outsider. Now It's This CEO's Superpower.
Cynthia Williams grew up playing make-believe in the woods of North Carolina. She was an outsider dreaming of being part of something bigger. She took that mindset with her as she started her career and scaled the ranks of and Microsoft. To fight off impostor syndrome Williams came up with her signature Wonder Woman pose: Standing up with her hands on her hips for two minutes.
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Dublin Literary Award winner Michael Crummey on losing his belief in redemption: ‘It feels like a pretty dark time'
'I'm dealing with a pretty bad case of impostor syndrome at the moment. I mean, I'm thrilled out of my mind, of course, but I just can't quite believe it yet.' Author Michael Crummey has just found out he's this year's winner of the Dublin Literary Award . Sponsored by Dublin City Council , the prize is unique in that nominations are submitted by librarians and readers from a network of libraries around the world. It also offers a uniquely large prize pot: the winner receives €100,000. Having been longlisted four times (in 2003, for River Thieves, in 2007, for The Wreckage, in 2016, for Sweetland, and in 2021, for The Innocents), and shortlisted once before (in 2011, for Galore), Crummey says he 'made a point of not spending that money in my head when I was shortlisted'. Also, he was up against fierce competition this year – the shortlist included the Booker Prize -winning Prophet Song, by Irish author Paul Lynch , and the Booker-shortlisted and National Book Award-winning James, by Percival Everett . Now that he can start counting his chickens, Crummey says he'd like to 'give a little chunk of money to both of our daughters, which I've never had the ability to do before. And my wife and I have some things around our house that we would like to get done.' READ MORE The 59-year-old speaks via video call from said house in his native Newfoundland, where the winning novel, The Adversary , is set. In fact, all of Crummey's six novels so far are set on the east-Canadian island. 'When I started out, I really felt the desire to try to get this place on paper,' he says. 'Newfoundland was largely an oral culture right up until my parents' generation ... There were a handful of Newfoundland writers in the generation before us, but they were outliers – they were so rare that there was no such thing as a literature of Newfoundland.' But another reason he's compelled to write about the place is that it's simply 'the most interesting place I've ever been'. 'Because it's an island, and has been isolated for so long, it's a place and people unto itself. The people here had to rely on themselves in so many ways: for survival, first of all, and also just to make a life for themselves, to entertain themselves, to build a world.' We speak about the Irish influence on the island, which he says is 'palpable in just about every community'. [ Newfoundland communities are 'most Irish' outside Ireland, genetic study finds Opens in new window ] 'There's what they call the Irish loop on the Avalon [Peninsula], and those communities are almost 100 per cent Irish. The mayor of Waterford was over here a number of years ago, and he said when he was on the southern shore of Avalon, he felt like he was in Waterford – just hearing people speak, and their names, everything. There's a non-broken line of descent from those original Irish settlers.' Michael Crummey: 'I don't know if I would have written a book like The Adversary 20 years ago. It feels to me like the world is embracing ideas and people who feel like violence and cruelty and disdain for people who have less is to be celebrated.' Photograph: Chris Bellew/Fennell Photography The early 19th century, a period during which many of these settlers were arriving to work as labourers, is the setting for The Adversary. A Cain and Abel-inspired fable, the book tells of a feuding brother and sister in the harbour town of Mockbeggar, a place whose harsh climate and corrupt power systems make life a fight for survival. The sister, Widow Caine, wears men's clothing, and will resort to any means to secure the kind of power and agency enjoyed by her brutish brother Abe, who is also fixated upon his own sense of importance and superiority. Though it can be read as a stand-alone, Crummey says he wrote The Adversary as a companion piece to his previous novel, The Innocents, which told of a brother and sister orphaned and left alone in a small cove not far from Mockbeggar. 'I've always thought that the engine of that book was their love in the circumstance that they find themselves in. But because the book was called The Innocents, I kept thinking about Blake's Songs of Innocence and Experience, and I started to wonder, could I do what he did where he took Songs of Innocence and flipped it on its head? I think he said he was writing those sequences to show the two contrary natures of the human soul. So really, The Adversary was a deliberate attempt to write the worst of who we are as human beings.' You just have to look at people like Trump and Putin and Netanyahu – the list is endless. I think they are who they appear to be … In most cases, they get worse — Michael Crummey The present age, in which 'the worst of who we are as human beings is on the ascendance, particularly in the political realm' was part of what gave rise to the story, Crummey says. 'It feels like a pretty dark time. I don't know if I would have written a book like The Adversary 20 years ago ... It feels to me like the world is embracing ideas and people who feel like violence and cruelty and disdain for people who have less is to be celebrated.' While writing, Crummey deliberately avoided a redemption arc for his central characters. And while Caine and Abe are adversaries, this is not a hero/anti-hero set-up. Rather, both central characters are anti-heroes. Narratively, this presented a challenge: how do you write characters who don't change? Crummey's approach was to turn the focus to the characters around the Widow and her brother. 'It's about what happens when you find yourself in the orbit of a black hole, and how everyone, in the end, gets pulled into that abyss.' He likens the scenario to Trump's relationship with the United States. 'When he was elected the first time, endless numbers of commentators said, 'We don't have to worry too much because there will be adults in the room, and they will curb the worst of his impulses.' And, of course, they all left or got fired or else decided [to] get on the train and become enablers. And that's what happens in this novel. People either decide to get on the train, or they're pushed aside, or destroyed.' The current political climate has made Crummey 'more misanthropic' than he used to be, he says. I have always said that ignorance has been my best friend in this whole process - not knowing how bad I was at the start, not knowing how long it was all going to take — Michael Crummey 'I've lost the ability to believe that redemption, or a personal change, can come over anybody. You just have to look at people like Trump and Putin and Netanyahu – the list is endless. I think they are who they appear to be ... In most cases, they get worse, as well.' Misanthropic may be the word he uses to describe himself but across the screen Crummey seems a gentle and open type, with endless passion for his work. Michael Crummey likens his narrative approach in The Adversary to Trump's relationship with the US: 'People either decide to get on the train, or they're pushed aside, or destroyed' Writing, he says, 'felt like a vocation from the beginning, but a ridiculous vocation. It felt a bit like saying, well, I want to collect bottle caps for a living.' Growing up, he followed his mother's influence and became 'the reader in the family', but it wasn't until he went to university to study English that writing became a serious pursuit. Poetry came first, then prose. Through his 20s, he worked 'crappy jobs' to support his vocation, publishing in journals and honing his craft, before releasing his debut collection of poetry, Arguments with Gravity, when he was 30. His debut short story collection, Flesh and Blood, came soon after. 'I think if someone had told me when I started out that it would be 13 or 14 years before I published my first book, I might have given it up or not started. But I have always said that ignorance has been my best friend in this whole process, you know, not knowing how bad I was at the start, not knowing how long it was all going to take.' [ Paul Durcan: 'Poetry was a gift that he loved to give others' Opens in new window ] Crummey's early work saw much success, including several award nominations and wins, but it wasn't until his third novel, Galore, that he began to feel he knew what he was doing as a writer. 'I don't know any writers who don't struggle with a sense of impostor syndrome,' he says. '[Being a writer] feels like it's something you keep having to prove to yourself. But I think [Galore] was the first time I wrote a book where I felt that's the book I was meant to write, and everything I had done up to that point felt it was leading me to a place where I was capable of writing that book.' The only problem with such an achievement, of course, was how to follow it. 'For a long time, I did feel like that novel was a roadblock. I'd written the book I wanted to write, so what do you do after that? But luckily, I have carried on, partly because I'm no good at anything else.' Of late, Crummey has been working on a poetry collection and some film scripts, though he also says he's 'starting to sneak back into that novel space in my head'. We joke that having won the award, all of that will go out the window. 'Now that I have some laurels to rest on, maybe I should just rest on my laurels,' he laughs. 'But I quit my day job about 25 years ago, and that felt like a fairly reckless thing to do. It always felt temporary. But I'm starting to think – I'm almost at retirement age – and I am starting to think I might make it through and as a writer. There's no certificate to put on your wall [to say you've qualified], but maybe that's the real sense of accomplishment and blessing – to think: no, this is it, this is my life, and I'll be able to do it until I decide I'm done with it.' The Adversary by Michael Crummey is published by Vintage Canada. Michael Crummey is the 30th winner of The Dublin Literary Award, sponsored by Dublin City Council.
News.com.au
19-05-2025
- Politics
- News.com.au
Jacinda Ardern's swipe at Donald Trump's ‘America First' policy during Yale University speech
Former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has appeared to take a swipe at the Trump Administration while giving a speech to graduating students at the prestigious American Ivy League, Yale University. Dame Jacinda, who has been living in the US as a Havard University fellow, spoke at Yale College's Class Day about 'impostor syndrome' and the need for traits that may be considered 'weak' by some, such as sensitivity and empathy, in the world and among leadership. But the 44-year-old said felt she an obligation to stray from the traditional address. 'That was to be the main message of my address to you today; the usual 'we need you' and 'don't doubt yourself' pep talk that perhaps you might expect at this juncture in your life. But as I sat down to pen these words, that suddenly didn't feel enough,' she said. 'Not when the world, over the course of a few short months, moved from tumultuous to an all-out dumpster fire. 'Telling you, you should be bold and brave as you move into the world didn't feel like enough.' 'There's the war in the Middle East and Europe, with both leaving questions over our sense of humanity, the daily reminder of climate change that bangs on our door but falls on deaf ears at the highest echelons of power, challenges to rules around trade, increases in migration flows and a decreasing regard for civil rights and human rights, including the right to be who you are.' Dame Jacinda, who threw her support behind Kamala Harris in the 2024 US election, was met with applause. 'Not to mention an environment rife with mis- and disinformation fuelling not what I would characterise as polarisation, but entrenchment,' she continued. 'Views dug down so deeply and held so strongly, they are like pieces of flint, becoming explosive slightest touch. 'We're living in a time where the small are made to feel smaller and those with power loom large.' Dame Jacinda said people needed an income safety net, and access to health and education to weather the storm. 'Some of the greatest leaders here in the United States have recognised this, that amongst all of the challenges politicians face, they must meet the most basic needs of their citizens, first and foremost,' she said. 'In fact, FDR (former US President Franklin D Roosevelt) said in 1944, while still governing a country at war, 'true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.'' Dame Jacinda said fear and isolationism are against the world's long-term self-interest. 'The illusion that closing yourself off from the world somehow means you are simply prioritising your own people ignores just how connected we are,' she said. She acknowledged while she had lived in the US for two years, she was not American and could not fully appreciate history, culture or politics. However, she said she had observed that the US had long been pushed and pulled between the sense of obligation to its own country and the world. 'But each time there is a crisis, a war, an infectious disease that grips us or climate change that these two things are not in fact a trade off. They are linked,' she said. 'You cannot remain untouched by the impacts of infectious disease. A trade stand-off can never just hurt your competitors. A warming planet does not produce extreme weather that respects borders, and far-flung wars may not take the lives of your citizens but it will take away their sense of security and humanity. 'We are connected. We always have been.' US President Donald Trump, who was inaugurated on January 21 this year, has been vocal about his 'America First' policy. One of his most controversial decisions with impacts across the globe were his sweeping so-called 'Liberation Day' tariffs, which were imposed in early April and then suspended for 90 days to allow negotiations. Dame Jacinda concluded: 'Remind one another that to be outwardly looking is not unpatriotic, to seek solutions to global problems is not a zero-sum game where your nation loses, that upholding a rules-based order is not nostalgic or of another era, and crucially, that in this time of crisis and chaos leading with empathy is a strength. 'Empathy has never started a war, never sought to take the dignity of others, and empathy teaches you that power is interchangeable with another word, responsibility.'
News.com.au
14-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Sports Illustrated cover model Salma Hayek admits she tried to ‘back out' of racy photo shoot
Salma Hayek is not showing signs of slowing down. The 58-year-old Mexican-American actress graces the latest cover of Sports Illustrated Swimsuit, posing in a green bikini, although she admits that she had doubts about going through with the photo shoot. 'I said yes and then when it was time to do it, I tried to back out,' Hayek told the US Today show. 'I said, 'No,' because the bathing suits never fit me, how am I gonna do this? There's nothing my size — I always suffer.'' As Hayek revealed she had a 'very bad case of impostor syndrome,' she continued to reflect on how she never imagined she would appear on the cover. 'I still can't believe it,' Hayek added. 'I remember when I was young and hot, I used to look at this magazine. I wanted to see who was the new gorgeous model, the new girl of the moment.' 'And it never crossed my mind that I could be on that cover because they didn't look like me. My body's not necessarily the model type and I never thought that was a possibility. And for it to happen when I'm 58? It's really shocking.' She expressed similar sentiments in her interview with the outlet itself, saying, 'I remember when I was young, a long, long time ago, I was always excited to see the Swimsuit Issue of Sports Illustrated, and [thinking] 'Who's going to be in it?' Of course, I didn't look like a model, so it never crossed my mind that one day I would be in it.' 'If somebody had told me I was gonna be in it at 58, I would have sent them to the madhouse, but the world has changed, and that's exciting.' Hayek continued, 'I feel so fortunate that I am part of a generation that has been able to really experience very tangible change. I could retire, but I don't want to miss out on this time. I fought for it, you know, and I've been part of it, and I think it's really remarkable that a magazine like Sports Illustrated [ Swimsuit ] says that it's O.K., maybe even cool, to be past 50 and still be able to feel not just sexy, but for me, to be free and not be self-conscious of your body like you have to hide.' This is not the first time Hayek has given fans a glimpse of her bikini body. Over the years, she has taken to social media multiple times to show off her fit physique in risqué bikinis. While this is a full-circle moment for Hayek, she admitted on US Today the journey has not always been glamorous. The actress additionally shared that she tried on 'more than 100' bikinis during the Sports Illustrated cover shoot. The magazine sent her '200 bathing suits,' and the House of Gucci star confessed 'a lot of them needed to be altered.' She also shared how the suitcase was lost by the time she had to shoot for the cover. However, Sports Illustrated had a 'small selection of extras' on set. 'That's what I wore,' she remarked. 'So you will see, they don't all fit perfectly. If it's extra small, it was accidental!'
