10-05 | Meet the Author – Deborah Svec-Carstens

About this event

At twenty-two, Deborah Svec-Carstens leaves small-town Iowa for Paris, hoping a year abroad will bring adventure, independence, and a fresh start. But just as she begins to feel at home, a morning run ends in sexual assault. Every instinct tells her to leave. Instead, she chooses to stay. As the months pass, Deborah leans on an unexpected community of friends, wrestles with questions of faith, and finds purpose in caring for Lily, the young girl entrusted to her care. Slowly, she discovers that healing is not a destination, but a path taken one step at a time. Set against the cafés, parks, and neighborhoods of Paris, Toward the Light is a coming-of-age memoir of trauma, resilience, and the courage of simply staying. Deborah Svec-Carstens, JD, MTS, is a writer, book coach, and spiritual director. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in bioStories, the Brevity blog, Ember & Vine Nonfiction Anthology, and This Is Not Your Mother’s Eating Disorder: An Anthology. Her work has received recognition from Writer’s Digest, WOW! Women on Writing, and Memoir Magazine. In 2024, she shared her story before an audience of more than 1,200 people as part of the Des Moines Storytellers Project. Deborah writes The Spiral Staircase on Substack and offers workshops and presentations. She lives in Central Iowa with her spouse, where she writes and accompanies others in their journeys of healing and story. Toward the Light is her first book. Debra Landwehr Engle will moderate the discussion. A Des Moines native, Debra is the bestselling author of The Only Little Prayer You Need, Let Your Spirit Guides Speak, and Twenty. She also is the executive director of Story Summit Writer’s School, mentoring writers around the world from her home in Madison County, Iowa.