Let’s Talk Memoir (Ronit Plank)
Explorez tous les épisodes de Let’s Talk Memoir
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| 02 Jan 2024 | 67. The Stories Landscapes Hold and the Presence of Absence featuring Pamela Petro | 00:47:30 | |
Pamela Petro joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the stories landscapes hold, why she resisted memoir and how she ultimately put herself on the page despite trying hard not to, pushing ourselves to keep asking questions, writing a braided memoir and the responsibility of incorporating research, deep time, the presence of absence, and her newest book The Long Field. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir -Take the Let's Talk Memoir survey: https://forms.gle/mctvsv9MGvzDRn8D6
Also in this episode: -the best way to learn writing -how language holds mysteries -revising for meaning
Books mentioned in this episode: The Architecture of Desire: Beauty and danger in the Stanford White Family by Suzannah Lessard
Pamela Petro is an author, artist, and educator living in Northampton, MA, with her partner, Marguerite, and Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Topaz. She has written four books of creative nonfiction including her latest, The Long Field – Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir, as well as Travels in an Old Tongue, also about Wales; Sitting up with the Dead, about the American South; and The Slow Breath of Stone, about Southwest France. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Sunday Telegraph, The Atlantic, Granta, Guernica, The Paris Review, and others. The Long Field was shortlisted for The Wales Book of the Year Award and was named to Top Ten Travel Book lists by The Financial Times and The Sunday Telegraph. Pamela teaches creative writing at Smith College and on Lesley University’s MFA in Creative Writing Program, and is co-Director of the Dylan Thomas Summer School at the University of Wales, Trinity St Davids, where she is also a Fellow. She has widely exhibited her photography and has also created an artist book, AfterShadows - A Grand Canyon Narrative, and a graphic script, Under Paradise Valley.
Connect with Pamela: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/petropamela Email: ppetro@smith.edu Course links: Lesley MFA in Creative Writing Program: https://lesley.edu/academics/graduate/creative-writing/ Dylan Thomas Summer School in Creative Writing, University of Wales: https://www.uwtsd.ac.uk/dylanthomas/summerschool/ Arcade Book: https://www.skyhorsepublishing.com/9781956763676/the-long-field/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 07 Jun 2022 | 14. The Divided Self in Memoir featuring Phillip Lopate | 00:26:27 | |
Phillip Lopate, a central figure in the revival of the American essay joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the integral role the divided self plays in memoir, striking the balance between telling and showing, how knowing your own flaws and defects helps build trust with the reader, why the intelligent narrator must be present from page one, and why having an interesting take on your story is as if not more important than the story itself.
Also in this episode: -why memoirs aren’t for getting even -turning yourself into a character -narcissistic parents in memoir
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Borrowed Finery by Paula Fox Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood by Mary McCarthy My Father Myself by J.R. Ackerly My Dog Tulip by J.R. Ackerly
Phillip Lopate is a central figure in the revival of the American essay, both through his ubiquitous edited anthology, Art of the Personal Essay, and his own essay collections, Bachelorhood, Against Joie de Vivre, Portrait of My Body and Portrait Inside My Head. He is also the author of such book-length nonfiction works as To Show and to Tell, Being with Children, Waterfront, Notes on Sontag, Rudy Burckhardt: Photographer and A Mother’s Tale. Additionally, he has written books of fiction (Confessions of Summer, The Rug Merchant, Two Marriages) and poetry (At the End of the Day). Finally, he has edited other anthologies (Writing New York and American Movie Critics), and is currently completing a three-volume historical anthology of the American essay. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a winner of Guggenheim, New York Public Library and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships, he is on the faculty of Columbia University’s Graduate Writing Program, School of the Arts. -- Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 31 Oct 2023 | 55. The Witches of Pitches on Building Platform, Creative Querying, and Stalking Editors featuring Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies | 00:36:50 | |
The Witches of Pitches are Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies here to share their advice about slowing scenes down, remembering that dialogue gives your memoir depth and flavor, finding the other story in your story, creative querying, what building a platform can mean, the power in companion pieces, honing your pitch, and stalking editors. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir Also in this episode: -kvetch sessions -writing as a business -being patient
Books mentioned in this episode: The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr Bomb Shelter by Mary Laura Philpott You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Magie Smith
Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies have formed a partnership from the modern love story playbook of online writing sessions. They have workshopped numerous articles, essays, and book proposals, helping writers produce top-notch material and are the Witches of Pitches. Aileen Weintraub is an award-winning author, journalist, and editor. She began her career as a copy editor and then as a developmental editor working for both children’s and adult publishing companies. As a freelance editor she has worked with clients to help develop their books, proposals, pitches, articles, and essays. She has written for The Washington Post, BBC, Oprah Daily, Parents, NBC, Al Jazeera, AARP, Glamour, InStyle, and other publications. Aileen is also the author of over fifty children’s books including the middle-grade social justice book WE GOT GAME! 35 Female Athletes Who Changed the World, which was honored as A Mighty Girl’s Best Book of the Year, and the best-selling Never Too Young: 50 Unstoppable Kids Who Made a Difference, a Parents’ Choice Award recipient. Her latest book Knocked Down: A High-Risk Memoir, is about marriage, motherhood, and the risks we take. The Erma Bombeck Workshop named Aileen Humor Writer of the Month for Knocked Down and Publishers Weekly says, “…there’s beauty on every page.” Aileen has also created a series on marketing and platform building in collaboration with Writers’ Digest. She lives in New York but her heart is in Seville. You can learn more at www.aileenweintraub.com.
Megan Margulies is an MFA recipient, memoirist, journalist, and a 2021 Next Generation Indie Book Award finalist for her book, My Captain America. Her essays and reported articles focus on motherhood and navigating life and healthcare as a woman. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Vogue Magazine, The Cut, Good Housekeeping, Elle Magazine, Parent’s Magazine, Oprah Daily, and more. Before entering the world of journalism, Megan worked for almost ten years as an editorial assistant at Harvard University where she edited countless articles, profiles, and promotional materials for various departments and professors. It’s where she first fell in love with the Chicago Manual of Style. She’s a native New Yorker, but splits her time between Boston and Vermont with her husband and two daughters. You can learn more at www.meganmargulies.com. – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 31 May 2022 | 13. The Case for Generosity in Memoir featuring Judy Bolton-Fasman | 00:30:57 | |
Judy Bolton-Fasman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation on how writing about complicated relationships with generosity creates stories and characters that stay with readers, the case for speculative nonfiction, the impact fellowships have had on her writing, negotiating family members who appear in memoir, and don’t-miss-encouragement for all artists.
Also in this episode: -how seeds of her memoir began in fiction -what blew her work open -Ronit mispronounces illustrative
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Knocked Down by AIleen Weintraub Priestdaddy: A Memoir by Patricia Lockwood How to Forget: A Daughter's Memoir by Kate Mulgrew
Bio: Judy Bolton-Fasman is the author of ASYLUM: A Memoir of Family Secrets from Mandel Vilar Press. Her essays and reviews have appeared in major newspapers including the New York Times and Boston Globe, essay anthologies, and literary magazines. She is the recipient of numerous writing fellowships, including the Alonzo G. Davis Fellowship for Latinx writers at the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. She is a four-time winner of the Rockower Award from the American Jewish Press Association and a two-time Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee. She recently received an honorable mention in Tiferet’s Creative Nonfiction Essay Writing Contest. Website: judyboltonfasman.com Amazon link to buy ASYLUM: https://www.amazon.com/Asylum-Memoir-Family-Secrets-Bolton-Fasman/dp/1942134770/ref=sr_1_1?crid=12OPHYITO9LWO&keywords=asylum+judy+bolton+fasman&qid=1649088222&sprefix=bolton-fasman%2Caps%2C96&sr=8-1
Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 12 Sep 2023 | 47. Relentless in Revision featuring Dinty W. Moore | 00:43:14 | |
Dinty W. Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about his 25 years as Editor-in-Chief of Brevity Magazine, elements that set submissions apart, landing on a writer’s voice, generating work in play mode yet being relentless in revision, resisting the urge to explain, allowing ourselves to be peculiar, and what rejection really means.
Also in this episode: -the stories in our lives we keep coming back to. -the gift of 750 words. -giving readers room to interpret.
Authors mentioned in this episode: James Baldwin Joan Didian Cheryl Strayed Heavy by Kiese Laymon Maggie Nelson Leslie Jamison
Dinty W. Moore worked as a journalist, a documentary filmmaker, a zookeeper, a modern dancer, and a Greenwich Village waiter before realizing he wanted to be a writer. He is author of the memoirs To Hell With It and Between Panic & Desire, winner of the Grub Street Nonfiction Book Prize, The Accidental Buddhist: Mindfulness, Enlightenment, and Sitting Still, the writing guide Crafting the Personal Essay, and is editor of The Rose Metal Press Field Guide to Writing Flash Nonfiction, among many other books. He has published essays and stories in The Georgia Review, Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Southern Review, Kenyon Review, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere. He is founding editor of Brevity, the journal of flash nonfiction, and teaches master classes and workshops across the United States as well as in Ireland, Scotland, Spain, Switzerland, Canada, and Mexico. He is deathly afraid of polar bears.
Connect with Dinty: Books: https://dintywmoore.com/category/books/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dintywmoore/ X: https://twitter.com/brevitymag Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dintyw/ -- Ronit’s writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards and the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE was named winner of Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and Finalist in the 2023 Page Turner Awards. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 30 Jul 2024 | 109. A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy featuring Tia Levings | 01:00:23 | |
Tia Levings joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her escape from Christian patriarchy and what she’s experienced firsthand with Christian nationalism and the Religious Right, why her story is a warning and is becoming more relevant by the day, the disempowerment and isolation of living in high control situations, trauma therapy, not exhausting readers with too much reality, comprehensive legal reviews, privacy and safety issues, composite characters, maintaining a big social media platforms as well as healthy boundaries, and her her path to publishing A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy.
Also in this episode: -writing 13 drafts -working with Lisa Cooper Ellison and Jane Friedman -the querying process
Books mentioned in this episode: The Situation and the Story by Vivan Gornick Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro From Blank Page to Book by Allison K. Williams On Writing by Stephen King Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
Tia Levings is a writer and content creator who educates on the abuses of Christian fundamentalism. She recently appeared in the Amazon docuseries, Shiny Happy People. Her memoir A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy, releases with St. Martin’s Press in August of 2024.
Connect with Tia: Website: https://tialevings.com Get her book: https://static.macmillan.com/static/smp/well-trained-wife-9781250288288/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tialevingswriter/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tialevingswriter Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TiaLevingsWriter
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 24 Sep 2024 | 121. Allowing Scenes and Dialogue to Do The Work featuring Becky Ellis | 00:44:09 | |
Becky Ellis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in the shadow of a father’s war trauma, what happens when soldiers come home, the power of secrets, the divided self and why memoirists need to be clear about their psychology, strategies for creating palpable worlds, avoiding judgment in our pages, making scenes and dialogue do the work of exposition, how memoir changes lives, creating tension, letting readers into our interior worlds, and her memoir Little Avalanches.
Also in this episode: -telling the story we need to read -setting character stakes -trusting the reader
Books mentioned in this episode: Story by Robert McKee Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls This Boys Life by Tobias Wolf The Liars Club by Mary Karr Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison Authors: Tim O’Brien, Rebecca Makkai, Maggie O’Farrell
Becky Ellis is a Timberwolf Pup. The daughter of a highly decorated World War II combat sergeant, she is a veteran of a war fought at home. She earned a BA in English Literature at UC Berkeley and has over twenty years of experience in the publishing industry. She teaches writing in Portland, Oregon, where she lives, plays, and has raised three daughters. Little Avalanches is her debut memoir. Connect with Becky: Website: https://beckyellis.net/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckyellisauthor/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/becky.ellis.9081/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-ellis-4084149/ – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 23 Apr 2024 | 91. The Arc of Reflection and The Arc of Action featuring Sue William Silverman | 00:42:25 | |
Sue William Silverman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about claiming our stories, creative nonfiction as an act of affirmation and courage, tapping into artistic masks, discovering answers along the way, the aware and the unaware voice, writing metaphorically and sensorily, the arc of reflection and the arc of action, her decades of teaching at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program and her newest book Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul.
Also mentioned in this episode: -the revision long-haul -our many writerly voices -Sue’s complete reading list
Books mentioned in this episode: -I wore the Ocean in the Shape of a Girl by Kelle Groom -Sue's Reading List: https://www.suewilliamsilverman.com/click_here_to_see_sue_william_silverman_s_contemporary_creative_nonfiction_readin_71566.htm
Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author of eight works of nonfiction and poetry. Her most recent book is "Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul." Her previous book, "How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences," won the gold star in Foreword Reviews Indie Book of the Year Award and the Clara Johnson Award for Women’s Literature. Other works include "Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction," made into a Lifetime TV movie; "Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You," which won the AWP Award; and "The Pat Boone Fan Club: My Life as a White Anglo-Saxon Jew." She is faculty co-chair in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Connect with Sue: Website: www.SueWilliamSilverman.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SueWilliamSilverman Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suewilliamsilverman/ Get Sue’s Books: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=sue+william+silverman&crid=3L3XIG0XVQ21Z&sprefix=%2Caps%2C123&ref=nb_sb_ss_recent_1_0_recent — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 19 Mar 2024 | 83. The Vulnerability of Writing About Difficult Motherhoods featuring Karen DeBonis | 00:45:43 | |
Karen DeBonis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the obstacles and medical gaslighting she faced trying to uncover what ailed her son, postpartum depression, writing about difficult motherhoods, learning how to deal with conflict, sharing our pages with partners, promoting our work, a happy social media story, how she overcome her people pleasing ways to become a warrior mom and her new memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived.
Also in this episode: -Munchausen by Proxy -marketing angles and memoir -highlighting our patterns in memoir
Books mentioned in this episode: Raising a Rare Girl by Heather Lanier Motherhood Exaggerated by Judith Hannan The Opposite of Certainty by Janine Urbaniak Reid
Karen DeBonis writes about motherhood, people-pleasing, and personal growth, inspired by the experience of raising her son, Matthew. Her debut memoir Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived was released by Apprentice House Press in May 2023. Karen’s work has appeared in The New York Times, Huff Post, Today.com, Newsweek.com, and others. A happy empty-nester, Karen lives in upstate New York with her husband of forty years.
Connect with Karen: Website: www.karendebonis.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.debonis.3 Twitter: https://twitter.com/KarenDeBonis IG: https://www.instagram.com/karendeboniswriter/ Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karendebonis/ Amazon purchase link: https://www.amazon.com/Growth-Mother-Brain-Tumor-Survived/dp/1627204350/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1672427791&sr=8-1 Bookshop purchase link: https://bookshop.org/p/books/growth-a-mother-her-son-and-the-brain-tumor-they-survived-karen-debonis/19468474?ean=9781627204354 — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 13 Feb 2024 | 74. Depicting Complex Relationships and Calibrating Metaphor in Memoir featuring Rosa Lowinger | 00:52:45 | |
Rosa Lowinger joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in Cuba, her storied career in art restoration, taking a closer look at the complicated and evolving relationship she’s had with her mother, sending manuscripts to family and exes before they go to press, protecting loved ones in our work, how much metaphor is too much, and her new memoir Dwell Time.
Also in this episode: -finding community -working with book coaches -approaching writing like a job
Books mentioned in this episode: Educated by Tara Westover Born a Crime by Trevor Noah Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangelo Little Failure by Gary Shteyngart The Year of Magical Thinking by Jon Didion H is for Hawk by Helen MacDonald Liar by Rob Roberge The Distance Between Us by Rayna Grande Avid Reader by Robert Gottlieb When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
Rosa Lowinger is a Cuban-born American art conservator and founder of RLA Conservation of Art + Architecture, LLC. (www.rlaconservation.com), the U.S.’s largest woman-owned materials conservation practice. She is also a published author, most well-known for Tropicana Nights: The Life and Times of the Legendary Cuban Nightclub (Harcourt, 2005), a book on Havana’s pre-Castro nightclub era. Other fictional works by Rosa include The Encanto File, a play produced off-Broadway by the Women’s Project and Productions and published in Rowing to America and Sixteen Other Short Plays, edited by Julia Miles (Smith & Kraus, 2002), and The Empress of the Waves, a short story published in the anthology Island in the Light/Isla en la Luz (Trapublishing, 2019).
Rosa’s academic and professional distinctions include the 2008-09 Rome Prize at the American Academy in Rome, where she researched the history of vandalism, graffiti, and street art; and Fellow status in the American Institute for Conservation and the Association for Preservation Technology. She holds an M.A. in Art History and Conservation from NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, lectures regularly at numerous universities around the country, and serves on the boards of the Amigos of the Cuban Heritage Collection at University of Miami, Florida Association of Museums, the Partnership for Sacred Places, and the Florida Association of Public Art Professionals. Rosa co-curated the exhibits Promising Paradise: Cuban Allure American Seduction (Wolfsonian Museum, 2016) and Concrete Paradise: Miami Marine Stadium (Coral Gables Museum, 2013). She writes regularly for academic and popular media about conservation, the arts, and Cuba. Her 1999 cover story on Havana for Preservation spawned a career in cultural travel that has taken her to Cuba over 100 times since 1992. She lives in Los Angeles and Miami and is married to Todd Kessler.
Connect with Rosa: Rosa’s Website:www.rosalowinger.com Instagram:https://www.instagram.com/rosa_Lowinger RLA Conservation’s Website: www.rlaconservation.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rlaconservation Purchase Dwell Time: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dwell-time-rosa-lowinger/1143192800 https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Dwell-Time/Rosa-Lowinger/9781955905275
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 31 Dec 2024 | 141. Tapping Into Our Bodies and Our Subconscious featuring Nadia Colburn | 00:33:10 | |
Nadia Colburn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about tuning into our bodies to discover what we need to say, creating different cultural conversations about surviving trauma, tapping into our subconscious, coming out of secrets, how poetry can help us access material, not needing to share work until we’re ready, what we learn from being in community with other writers, and her signature online course Align Your Story for Women.
Also in this episode: -mitigating shame -how our bodies remember -meditation and dreamwork
Books mentioned in this episode: -The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank -The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk -Trauma and Recovery by Judith Lewis Herman -Educated by Tara Westover -Nothing Holds Back the Night by Delphine de Vigan -The work of Annie Ernaux
Nadia Colburn is the author of the poetry books "I Say the Sky" and "The High Shelf", and her poetry and prose have appeared in more than eighty publications, including The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, The Kenyon Review, Spirituality & Health, Lion's Roar, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Yale Review. She holds a Ph.D. in English from Columbia University, is a yoga teacher and serious student of Thich Nhat Hanh and is the founder of Align Your Story Writing School, which brings traditional literary and creative writing studies together with mindfulness, embodied practices, and social and environmental engagement. The school has a community of over 30,000 mindful writers. Nadia is passionate about helping her students reclaim their stories, come out of secrets, listen to their bodies, and embrace and step into their full creative voices, on and off the page. Nadia lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband and two children. She is currently at work on a full-length memoir on pregnancy and early motherhood. Find her at nadiacolburn.com, where she offers meditations and free resources for writers. Connect with Nadia: Website: https://nadiacolburn.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alignyourstory Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nadia.colburn/ Free 5-Day Meditation & Writing Challenge: https://nadiacolburn.com/free-mindful-writing-challenge/ Free Resource Library for Writers: https://nadiacolburn.com/free-resources/ "I Say the Sky" on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Say-Sky-Poems-Contemporary-Poetry/dp/081319864X "I Say the Sky" from Kentucky Press: https://www.kentuckypress.com/9780813198637/i-say-the-sky/ 7-Day "I Say the Sky" Companion Meditation and Writing Challenge (free with book order -- just input book order number): https://nadiacolburn.com/7-day-new-year-practice/ Align Your Story for Women (Nadia's signature online course): https://nadiacolburn.com/align-your-story/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 25 Feb 2025 | 152. Grief Journeys and Storytelling as Closure featuring Susan Lieu | 00:52:27 | |
Susan Lieu joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about realizing you’re an artist later in life, becoming a multi-hyphinate storyteller, being a mother when you never knew your own, piecing together a family story, feeling plagued by structure, sticking to the throughline, writing residencies, writing down goals, deciding to stop searching for approval from loved ones and getting it for and from ourselves, accepting loved ones as they are, grief journeys, storytelling as closure, and her new memoir The Manicurist’s Daughter.
Also in this episode: -using a book doctor -mental health stigma and older generations -body acceptance
Books mentioned in this episode: -Ma and Me by Putsata Reang
SUSAN LIEU is a Vietnamese-American author, playwright, and performer who tells stories that refuse to be forgotten. She took her award-winning autobiographical solo show 140 LBS: How Beauty Killed My Mother on a ten-city national tour, with sold-out premieres and accolades from the Los Angeles Times, NPR, and American Theatre. Her debut memoir, The Manicurist’s Daughter, is an Apple Book of the Month, Apple Book Must Listen of the Month, and has been featured on The New York Times, NPR Books, Elle Magazine, LA Times, and The Washington Post. Creator of The Vagina Monologues, V (formerly Eve Ensler) calls The Manicurist’s Daughter “a stunning, raw, brave memoir that wouldn’t let me go.” She is a proud alumnae of Harvard College, Yale School of Management, Coro, Hedgebrook, and Vashon Artist Residency. She is also the cofounder of Socola Chocolatier, an artisanal chocolate company based in San Francisco. Susan lives with her husband and son in Seattle, where they enjoy mushroom hunting, croissants, and big family gatherings. The Manicurist’s Daughter is her first book. Connect with Susan: Website: https://www.susanlieu.me/ Model Minority Moms Podcast: https://modelminoritymoms.com/ Instagram: @susanlieu, @celadonbooks facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susanlieuofficial TikTok: @susanlieuofficial LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanlieu/ – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 12 Nov 2024 | 132. Writing Lyrically About the Perceptual Richness of Altered Sight featuring Naomi Cohn | 00:52:18 | |
Naomi Cohn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about becoming legally blind in mid-life and how that changed her writing process, going from poetry to lyric essay, falling in love with Braille, being sure something is done and also realizing there’s more, reading our work aloud, privacy and what’s ours to tell, the perceptual richness of having altered sight, tapping into our senses, Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, nonlinear logic, writing in small chunks, being curious, trusted readers, and her new book The Braille Encyclopedia.
Also in this episode: -prose poems -tapping into the nonlinear -ableism
Books mentioned in this episode: What It Is by Lynda Barry Pain Woman Takes Your Keys by Sonya Huber Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
Naomi Cohn, author of the debut memoir THE BRAILLE ENCYCLOPEDIA, is a writer and teaching artist who works with older adults and people living with disabilities. Her past includes a childhood among Chicago academics; art-making: editing Disclosure, a national publication on community organizing; involvement in a guerrilla feminist art collective; and work as an encyclopedia copy editor, community organizer, fundraiser, nonprofit consultant, and therapist. Red Dragonfly Press published her chapbook, Between Nectar & Eternity, in 2013. Her poetry and essays have also appeared in Baltimore Review, Hippocampus, Nimrod, Poetry and, Terrain, among other places. She makes her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Connect with Naomi: Order Naomi’s Book: https://rosemetalpress.com/books/the-braille-encyclopedia/ Attend Naomi’s Reading Events: https://rosemetalpress.com/readings-events/ – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 04 Apr 2024 | 87. Trusting Your Readers, Trusting Yourself featuring Mimi Zieman | 00:47:54 | |
Mimi Zieman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about thinking of ourselves as characters, hooking readers from the beginning, playing with structure, balancing our reflective narrator, trusting your reader and not overexplaining, the true self and the invisible self, when to listen to others and when to listen to ourselves, being the only woman on a historic climbing expedition, and her memoir Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor’s Unlikely Adventure.
Also in this episode: -growing up a child of Holocaust survivors -pitching at live conferences -having patience with ourselves
Books mentioned in this episode: The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick Heavy by Kiese Laymon Wild by Cheryl Strayed Make a Scene by Jordan E. Rosenfeld To Show and to Tell by Phillip Lopate Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book by Allison K. Williams Bird by Bird by Anne Lammot Books by John Krakauer Books by Joan Didion
Mimi Zieman MD is the author of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor’s Unlikely Adventure, and The Post-Roe Monologues, a play that has been performed in multiple cities. A board-certified OB/GYN specialized in Complex Family Planning, she has also co-authored sixteen editions of Managing Contraception. Her writing has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Ms. Magazine, Newsweek, Dorothy Parker’s Ashes, NBC News THINK, The Forward, and other publications. She’s spoken nationally and internationally and has been interviewed by major media outlets. Ranking high on her list of favorite things are a good adventure, dancing, and a rich cup of coffee.
Connect with Mimi: Website: www.mimiziemanmd.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mimiziemanmd/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mimiziemanmd Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mimiziemanmd/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimi-zieman-md-44ba68b/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mimiziemanmd
Get Mimi’s Book: Amazon: https://amzn.to/41sFEnB Bookshop: https://bit.ly/3Rjk9kk
About Ronit Subscribe to Ronit's Memoir Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank?utm_source=profile-page Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 27 Dec 2022 | 22. Writing a Memoir About The Mother Who Betrayed You featuring Author Laura Davis | 01:25:07 | |
Celebrated author and memoir teacher Laura Davis joins Let’sTalk Memoir for a special holiday episode for a conversation about writing her memoir The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story and how she reconciled with the mother who betrayed her and came to care for her in her final days. In this episode Laura also shares her tips for writing about traumatic experiences, where the boundaries are when writing about family experiences, and what all memoir writing needs.
Laura Davis is the author of The Burning Light of Two Stars, the riveting memoir about her tumultuous yet loving relationship with her mother, and six other non-fiction books, including The Courage to Heal, Allies in Healing, I Thought We‘d Never Speak Again, and Becoming the Parent You Want to Be. Her groundbreaking books have been translated into 11 languages and sold 1.8 million copies. In addition to writing books that inspire and change people’s lives, the work of Laura’s heart is to teach. For more than twenty years, she’s helped people find their voices, tell their stories, and hone their craft. Laura loves creating supportive, intimate writing communities online, in person, and internationally. You can learn about Laura’s books and workshops, read the first five chapters of her memoir, and receive a free ebook: Writing Through Courage: A 30-Day Practice at www.lauradavis.net.
For Let’s Talk Memoir Listeners, you can also read the opening chapters for free here: http://www.lauradavis.net/chapters Direct links to buy The Burning Light of Two Stars: Audiobook version of The Burning Light of Two Stars (Laura is the narrator): On Audible: https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Burning-Light-of-Two-Stars-Audiobook/B09G8WJQP7 And on Libro.fm for independent stores: https://libro.fm/audiobooks/9781950144471
Independent Bookstores: Get Signed Copies Through Bookshop Santa Cruz: https://www.bookshopsantacruz.com/burning-light-two-stars-get-it-signed Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/books/the-burning-light-of-two-stars-a-mother-daughter-story-9781954854161/9781954854161 Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1954854161 Want to Order Internationally with Free Worldwide Delivery? https://www.bookdepository.com/The-Burning-Light-of-Two-Stars-Laura-Davis/9781954854161
Attention Writers: If you’re a writer or want to use writing as a tool for healing or self-discovery, you can learn about Laura’s online writing workshops and in-person domestic and international retreats here: www.lauradavis.net And if you want to go on a magical creative vacation to Tuscany with Laura in June of 2022, check out some serious eye candy here!
Connect with Laura Davis: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thewritersjourney Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurasaridavis/ -- Ronit is a teacher and speaker whose essays, creative nonfiction, and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2023. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 31 Oct 2024 | 129. Staying True to Our Creative Vision featuring Gina Troisi | 00:35:01 | |
Gina Troisi joins Lets Talk Memoir for a conversation about searching for home and belonging, writing difficult stories and releasing them into the world, feeling too close to our manuscripts and taking breaks, why memoir is sometimes misunderstood, when material feels too difficult, thinking of ourselves as a character, reckoning with self-abandonment and hurting others, writing memoir as fiction first, moving from stand-alone essays to book length work, staying true to our creative vision and her memoir The Angle of Flickering Light.
Also in this episode: -unpacking honest emotions -self-destructive cycles -winning writing awards
Books mentioned in this episode: -The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch -Wild by Cheryl Strayed -The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion -Lovesick by Sue William Silverman -Abandon Me by Melissa Febos -Memoirs by Abigail Thomas
Gina Troisi is the author of the memoir, The Angle of Flickering Light (Vine Leaves Press, 2021), which was a finalist for the 2022 Maine Literary Awards. The Angle of Flickering Light won first place for the 2021 Royal Dragonfly Book Award for Memoir, received a Silver Medal for the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), a Silver Medal for the 2021 Reader’s Favorite Book Award, and has placed in several other contests, including but not limited to the 2021 New England Book Festival Award for Non-fiction, the 2021 Paris Book Festival Award for Memoir, and the 2021 Southern California Book Festival Award for Memoir. Gina's novel-in-stories, After the Rush, was the First Place Winner for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest For Literary Fiction, a Semi-Finalist for Ohio State University’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize, and a Finalist for the 2023 Acacia Prize for Fiction.
Gina received an MFA in creative nonfiction from The University of Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program in 2009. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Fourth Genre, The Gettysburg Review, Fugue, Under the Sun, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Southern New Hampshire University, and is a mentor in the Masters of Fine Arts Creative & Professional Writing Program at Western Connecticut State University. She also offers academic tutoring as well as one-on-one coaching for creative writers. Connect with Gina: Website: https://gina-troisi.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gina.troisi.7/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ginatroisiwriter/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 04 Apr 2023 | 37. Sharing A Dangerous Story featuring Erika Bornman | 00:44:13 | |
Erika Bornman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her experience escaping from KwaSizabantu and her participation in News24’s exposé alleging this strict Christian mission is a cult is a cult riddled with abuse, the compassion she found writing about loved ones with whom she has longstanding conflict, how she approached crafting emotionally difficult passages, the legal advice she got about including controversial material in her memoir Mission of Malice, and why our voice matters.
Also in this episode: -the importance of therapy for memoirists -working with hard deadlines -building empathy through stories
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt The Choice by Dr Edith Eger Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser Lost Boy by Brent Jeffs and Maia Szalavitz Wholly Unravelled by Keele Burgin Unfollow by Meghan Phelps-Roper I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang Boy on the Run by Welcome Mandla Lishivha Killing Karoline by Sara-Jayne King Mad Bad Love by Sara-Jayne Makwala King
Erika Bornman has carved a career for herself in magazine publishing as a writer and editor, despite her lack of formal training. Her memoir is her first book and an important element in her quest to make the world a safer place for children. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa, with her two cats. About her memoir Mission of Malice: When Erika Bornman was nine years old, her family joined, and ultimately moved to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission in South Africa – a place touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks below the veneer of piousness here. Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged. Isolated and alone, Erika lives in constant fear of eternal damnation. At 17, her grooming at the hands of a senior mission counsellor begins. For the next five years, KwaSizabantu wages emotional, psychological and sexual warfare on her, until, finally, she manages to break free and walk away at the age of 21. Escaping a restrictive religious community is difficult, but rehabilitation into ‘normal’ life after a decade of ritual humiliation, brainwashing and abuse is much more painful, as Erika soon discovers. She cannot ignore her knowledge of the grievous human-rights abuses being committed at KwaSizabantu, and so she embarks on a quest to expose the atrocities. With her help, News24 launches a seven-month investigation, culminating in a podcast that will go on to win the internationally renowned One World Media Award for Radio and Podcast in 2021. In Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu, Erika chronicles her journey from a fearful young girl to a fierce activist determined to do whatever it takes to save future generations and find personal redemption and self-acceptance.
Connect with Erika: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ebee40 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erikabornman/ Website: www.erikabornman.com Get Erika’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Malice-My-exodus-KwaSizabantu-ebook/dp/B09B45VMP6
-- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 Mar 2024 | 80. Realizing You’ve Actually Been Writing Your Book featuring Rona Maynard | 00:36:41 | |
Rona Maynard joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about allowing ourselves to get lost in our writing, realizing you've actually been writing your book, observing our animal companions keenly, embracing surprises in our work, discovering joyful moments, looking for a narrative arc, using Scrivener, going more deeply, writing from the heart, and her memoir Starter Dog.
Also in this episode: -taking in the world around us -photographs as writing aids -learning who we are
Books mentioned in this episode: Travels with Charley by John Steinbeck What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchet In the Key of New York by Rebecca McClanahan
Rona Maynard found happiness at 65—a story she tells in her new memoir Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging and Loving This World. She first broke into print at 14 with a short story about bullying and still receives fan mail from teens who are reading it in class. Rona capped a stellar career in magazines with a decade at the helm of Chatelaine, Canada’s leading magazine for women. Her editor’s column garnered a loyal following. When she disclosed a struggle with depression, she helped kickstart a national conversation about mental health. When Rona stepped away from corporate life, she had to learn to unwind. Her best teacher was a rescue mutt who had received his basic training in a prison. She has been married more than 50 years to her best friend, tech advisor and driver on a cross continental art adventure that took them to 49 museums in five weeks. Rona says road trips go better with a dog in the back seat.
Connect with Rona: Website: https://ronamaynard.com/ Medium: https://ronamaynard.medium.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rona.maynard/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronamaynard3278/?hl=en LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronamaynard/
Get Rona’s book:
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 10 Jan 2023 | 24. The Editor We All Need featuring Allison K. Williams | 00:44:49 | |
Literary Citizen of the Year Allison K Williams joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the importance of plot, structure, and dramatic arc in memoir, the elements that make a story a story, insuring your memoir has a reader takeaway, what being in the circus taught her about writing, why she calls herself the unkind editor, and how she really feels about memoir. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir Also in this episode: -Allison’s editor origin story -what being a “real” writer actually means -tips for working with an editor
Books mentioned in this episode: Scrappy Little Nobody by Anna Kendrick To Hell by Dinty W. Moore Broken in the Best Possible Way by Jenny Lawson The Biggest Bluff by Maria Konnikova
Allison K Williams is the author of Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Book. She has edited and coached writers to deals with Penguin Random House, Knopf, Mantle, Spencer Hill, St. Martin’s and independent presses. She’s guided essayists to publication in the New Yorker, Time, the Guardian, the New York Times, McSweeney’s and TED Talks. As Social Media Editor for Brevity, she inspires thousands of writers with blogs on craft and the writing life. A former circus performer, Allison has written for NPR, CBC, the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, Creative Nonfiction, McSweeney’s, Kenyon Review Online and Travelers’ Tales. Her plays, including Mark Twain Award winner Hamlette and London Fringe Best of Fringe Winner TRUE STORY, have been produced worldwide.
Connect with Allison: Twitter: twitter.com/guerillamemoir Instagram: instagram.com/guerillamemoir Website: www.allisonkwilliams.com Linktree: www.linktree.com/guerillamemoir -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 09 Apr 2024 | 88. Digging to Find a Deeper Story featuring Suzette Mullen | 00:43:18 | |
Suzette Mullen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about digging to find a deeper story and the question we need to ask in memoir, discovering where to begin by getting to the end of our manuscripts, the revision process as revelatory, the effect our memoirs have on loved ones, leaning on trusted readers and writers, her work as a nonfiction book coach, and her coming of age and coming out memoir The Only Way Through is Out.
Also in this episode: -the querying process -working with a book coach -finding professional purpose
Books mentioned in this episode: In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders by Jennifer Finney Boylan
Suzette Mullen (she/her) is a memoir and nonfiction book coach, retreat leader, and the author of the memoir The Only Way Through Is Out, published by the University of Wisconsin Press. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, today.com, and Brevity among other outlets. As a book coach, Suzette guides writers to find their deeper stories and define their big ideas. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Wellesley College, and the mother of two young adult sons, Suzette made a big leap professionally and personally at midlife and now lives in Pennsylvania with her wife and their rescue pup.
Connect with Suzette: Website: https://www.yourstoryfinder.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/urstoryfinder/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suzette-mullen-lgbtq-book-coach/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/yourstoryfinder Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Suzette-Mullen-Author/100063523689955/ For info about the memoir: https://www.yourstoryfinder.com/books My free e-book: "Behind the Scenes: An Insider’s Guide to THE ONLY WAY THROUGH IS OUT https://www.yourstoryfinder.com/behindthescenes
— About Ronit Subscribe to Ronit's Memoir Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank?utm_source=profile-page Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Jo | |||
| 12 Dec 2023 | 64. Memoir in Present Tense and Reprocessing Our Lives Through Writing featuring Sherry Sidoti | 00:54:39 | |
Sherry Sidoti joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about memoir in present tense, reckoning with the complexities of transgenerational trauma, dysfunctional families, the effect writing memoir can have on our significant others, mother-daughter-sister relationships, self-care practices and engaging with our bodies while working on charged material, vulnerability hangovers, and her memoir A Smoke and a Song.
Also in this episode: -broken backstories -making material digestible -reprocessing our lives through the act of writing
Books mentioned in this episode: Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T. Kira Madden All of This by Rebecca Woolf Clarity by DIana Estill When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
Sherry Sidoti is an author and the founder and lead director of FLY Yoga School, a yoga teacher training program, and FLY Outreach, a not-for-profit that offers yoga and meditation for trauma recovery on Martha’s Vineyard. A certified Labor Doula, Addiction Recovery Coach, and Somatic Attachment Therapy Program graduate, she leads spiritual courses, teacher training, and retreats globally. Her musings, infused by twenty years of practicing and teaching yoga, healing arts, and mysticism have been published by The Martha’s Vineyard Times, Heart & Soul Magazine, Elephant Journal, and Anthropology and Humanism Quarterly. Her essay “Mosaics” is featured in the 2022 She Writes Anthology: Art in Times of Unbearable Crisis. Sherry is most devoted to her greatest teacher, her son Miles, whose love, sensitivity, humor, and wisdom illuminate her path. A Smoke and a Song is Sherry’s first book. She currently resides on Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts.
Connect with Sherry: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sherry.sidoti/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sherrysidoti/ Website: https://www.sherrysidoti.com A Smoke and a Song: https://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Song-Memoir-Sherry-Sidoti/dp/1647425093/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1691880496&sr=8-1 – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 03 Jan 2023 | 23. The Acceptance of Imperfection featuring Kathy Curto | 00:41:22 | |
Kathy Curto joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about accepting imperfection in our writing, the effect of time and distance in our work, finding beauty even in the painful, what she’s learned through teaching writing to a broad range of students, and her memoir in micro essays Not for Nothing: Glimpse into a Jersey Girlhood.
Also in this episode: -the importance of a writing community no matter how small -the potency of the flash form -how voice is always changing
Books mentioned in this episode: The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou This Boy's Life by Tobias Wolff Heavy by Kiese Laymon Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz The memoirs and poetry of Mary Karr
Kathy Curto teaches at Sarah Lawrence College/The Writing Institute, Montclair State University and The Writers Circle as well as several nonprofit organizations and community centers in the metropolitan area. She is the author of Not for Nothing-Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood. Her work has been featured in The New York Times, on NPR, in the anthology Listen to Your Mother: What She Said Then, What We’re Saying Now, and in Oh, Reader, Barrelhouse, The Mom Egg Review, Drift and Talking Writing, among others. Kathy pens a Write or Die Tribe biweekly column, Words on the Street, Revisited, where she explores everyday language and the writing practice. Her micro-memoir, “Still Cooking Side by Side” considered a “Modern Love in miniature” by The New York Times, was included in The Best of Tiny Love Stories in August 2021. Kathy lives with her family in the Hudson Valley. Please visit: www.kathycurto.com.
Connect with Kathy Curto: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kathy.curto/ Facebook: Kathy Curto-Writer https://www.facebook.com/kathy.curto26 Website: https://www.kathycurto.com/
—
Ronit is a teacher and speaker whose essays, creative nonfiction, and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2023. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 10 Sep 2024 | 118. Memoir Manifestos and Taking Back Our Power featuring Jessica Buchanan | 00:38:13 | |
Jessica Buchanan joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her capture by pirates in Somalia in 2011 and how her life’s trajectory was irrevocably changed, taking back power, holding space for our stories, showing up for one another as writers, demystifying the publishing process, celebrating our wins, book branding and building platform, not being paralyzed by perfection, her boutique nontraditional press Soul Speak Press and her anthology series From Deserts to Mountaintops.
Also in this episode: -how we have to hustle -trusting our intuition -being of service
Books mentioned in this episode: Many Lives of Mama Love by Lara Love Hardin The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls Books by Anne Lamott
On October 25, 2011, while on a routine field mission in Somalia, working as the Education Advisor for her non-governmental organization, Jessica was abducted at gunpoint and held for ransom by a group of Somali pirates for 93 days. Forced to live outdoors in deplorable conditions, starved, and terrorized by more than two dozen gangsters, Jessica’s health steadily deteriorated until, by order of President Obama, she was rescued by the elite SEAL Team VI on January 25, 2012.
Jessica’s ordeal is detailed in her New York Times bestselling book, Impossible Odds: The Kidnapping of Jessica Buchanan and Her Dramatic Rescue by SEAL Team Six. Jessica has been named one of the ‘150 Women Who will Shake the World’ by Newsweek, and her story was the most highly viewed 60 Minutes episode to air, to-date. Jessica is a highly sought-after inspirational speaker and her TEDx Pearl Street talk, ‘Change is Your Proof of Life’ has been the foundation for which she travels the world, inspiring audiences to access their resilience by identifying their own autonomy and choice in the middle of their own life changing event.
Jessica is the founder of Soul Speak Press where she supports women who are ready to share their stories through Memoirs – books that are one part memoir, one part self-help, and one part inspiration. Jessica’s upcoming anthology project, Deserts to Mountaintops: Pilgrimage of Motherhood, is currently in development and scheduled for publication in early 2025.
Jessica works as a family liaison volunteer for the non-profit organization, Hostage US, supporting former hostages and their families during captivity and eventual return, and also continues to serve as a dedicated Ambassador for the Navy SEAL Foundation, which works to support families of fallen SEALs. Connect with Jessica: Official Website: https://www.jessbuchanan.com/ Publishing Website: https://www.soulspeakpress.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessicabuchananpage LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-buchanan-05ba7364/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jessicacbuchanan/
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 23 Jul 2024 | 108. Paying Attention to What Intrudes on Us and Confronting Ghosts featuring Sonya Huber | 00:35:44 | |
Sonya Huber joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her approach to generating essays, working on many projects at once, writing as exposure therapy, how essays in a collection talk to each other, paying attention to what intrudes on us, living and working in the tangents, an accumulation of questions around a central theme, protecting people, crossing cultures and crossing classes, confronting ghosts, men and danger, being in relationship with writing, and her latest book, Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook
Also in this episode: -writing backward -questions of class -narrative arc
Listen to Sonya Huber’s first Let’s Talk Memoir episode, #16: https://ronitplank.com/2022/11/15/lets-talk-memoir-season-2-episode-1-ft-sonya-huber/
Books mentioned in this episode: Bird by Bird Anne Lamott Dog Flowers by Danielle Geller Nola Face by Brooke Champagne
Sonya Huber is the author of eight books, including the new essay collection, Love and Industry: A Midwestern Workbook as well as the writing guide, Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto, and an award-winning essay collection on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Her other books include the Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir in a Day, Opa Nobody, Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir, and The Backwards Research Guide for Writers. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and other outlets. She teaches at Fairfield University and in the Fairfield low-residency MFA program.
Connect with Sonya: Website: www.sonyahuber.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonyahuber/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sonya.huber Substack: https://sonyahuber.substack.com/ Books available here: https://bookshop.org/lists/sonya-huber-s-books
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 02 Nov 2023 | 56. Memoir in Miniature featuring Jennifer Lang | 00:35:28 | |
Jennifer Lang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about compressing prose and chopping manuscripts, leaning into the experimental, distilling material, staying nimble-minded, her husband and her becoming characters on the page, founding Israel Writers Studio, and her new memoir Places We Left Behind. Also in this episode: -remembering to play on the page -the scarcity of poetry as guide -searching for home
Books mentioned in this episode: You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly Belonging by Nora Krug Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal Fun Home by Alison Bechdel Devotion by Dani Shapiro
Connect with Jennifer: Author website: https://israelwriterstudio.com/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/jennifer.f.lang.9/ Facebook: www.facebook.com/israelwriterstudio/ Instagram: www.instagram.com/jenlangwrites/ Good Reads: www.goodreads.com/book/show/142425302-places-we-left-behind Classes: https://israelwriterstudio.com/classes/
– Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 18 Apr 2023 | 39. Processing Grief with Words featuring Candace Cahill | 00:31:14 | |
Candace Cahill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about placing her newborn son for adoption and meeting him as an adult shortly before his death, writing for clarity, negotiating guilt, finding compassion for yourself, writing as a process for grieving, and her memoir Goodbye Again.
Also in this episode: -child relinquishment -extending grace to parents who fell short -the benefits of writing groups
Books mentioned in this episode: All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung When I Was Her Daughter by Leslie Ferguson Wild by Cheryl Strayed Educated by Tara Westover The Burning Light of Two Stars by Laura Davis
Candace Cahill is a multi-disciplinary artist from Denali, Alaska, and the author of Goodbye Again, a memoir about losing her son twice. A life-long learner, she utilizes traumatic experiences from her life to provide insights into self-compassion and healing. Known for her ability to engage diverse audiences, her stories are tragic yet uplifting. She delights and inspires audiences with her storytelling expertise through speaking engagements, written work, songwriting, and as a seasonal National Park Ranger. When Candace is not telling stories, you can find her walking in the woods, playing her guitar, and reading books.
Connect with Candace: Website: candacecahill.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/candace_cahill_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candace.cahill.16 – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 Dec 2023 | 63. Writing That Gets Noticed featuring Estelle Erasmus | 00:35:24 | |
Estelle Erasmus brings her 30 years of experience to Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about what it takes to break through submission slushpiles, the key to exemplary essays, honing our writer’s voice and giving editors what they need, pitching story vs. topic, the art of companion pieces, conveying our passion and investment, and her new book Writing That Gets Noticed.
Also in this episode: -podcasts as a way to reach readers -the pace of online outlets -researching before you pitch
Books mentioned in this episode: On Writing Well by William Zinsser The Situation and the Story by VIvian Gornick When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
Estelle Erasmus, author of Writing That Gets Noticed: Find Your Voice, Become a Better Storyteller, Get Published (June 2023), is a professor of writing at New York University, the host of the Freelance Writing Direct podcast, and former “All About the Pitch” columnist for Writer’s Digest where she also teaches classes on pitching, personal essay writing, and getting started in writing. She has written about a variety of subjects (health, beauty, fitness, publishing, business, travel) for numerous publications. Her articles for the New York Times and Washington Post have gone globally viral (with more than 500 comments on her New York Times piece, “How to Bullyproof Your Child”). She has appeared on Good Morning America and has had her articles discussed on The View. She has also taught, coached, and mentored many writers who have gone on to be widely published in top publications. She received the 2023 NYU School of Professional Studies Teaching Excellence Award, is an American Society of Journalists and Authors award winner, and was a cast member in the inaugural New York City production of the Listen to Your Mother storytelling show. Learn more at www.EstelleSErasmus.com and register for her latest classes. Also, follow Estelle on Instagram, TikTok, and X, and sign up for her Substack
Connect with Estelle: Author of WRITING THAT GETS NOTICED Available to order now. www.estelleserasmus.com (sign up for her newsletter) Adjunct Instructor, NYU (Sign up for my latest classes) Recipient 2023 NYU SPS Teaching Excellence Award Freelance Writing Direct Podcast (iTunes) (She speaks to Cheryl Strayed, Ann Hood, Noah Michelson, Alan Henry, and more) Freelance Writing Direct Podcast (YouTube) Follow me: Twitter, Instagram, TikTok Writer's Digest: What to Do to Maximize Your Launch Week And Get Your Book Noticed
– Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 May 2024 | 94. Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow featuring Steve Almond | 00:50:50 | |
Steve Almond joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the ambivalence memoirists often experience when writing about others, the story underneath the story we are telling, disrupting the negative feedback loop of writer’s block, dialing the ego down, questions of inner life, his contribution to Dear Sugars podcast, generosity and mercy in our work, performing versus storytelling, how our failures are actually are teachers, and his new book on writing, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow.
Also in this episode: -the contract we make with the reader -the surrender involved in writing -holding other people in our stories
Books mentioned in this episode: Wild by Cheryl Strayed Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistero Work by Nora Ephron and Joan Didion
Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books, including the NYT Bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His novel, “All the Secrets of the World” has been optioned for TV by 20th Century Fox. His new book, “Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow” and his stories and essays have appeared in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Best American Short Stories, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. He teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and lives outside Boston with his family.
Connect with Steve: Website: www.stevealmondjoy.org Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevealmondjoy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steve.almond.33 Steve’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Arrow-Mercy-Bow-Construction/dp/1638931305
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 13 Mar 2025 | 157. The Boundaries and Distance We Need to Tell Certain Stories featuring Paula Delgado-Kling | 00:42:00 | |
Paula Delgado-Kling joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how her research and reporting on child soldiers, drug trafficking, and the revolutionary armed forces of Columbia (FARC) led her to tell the story of one woman and her family, the relationships we forge with whom we write about, allowing memoir to answer our questions, negotiating language barriers and class differences, coming to truth and understanding, grounding ourselves, hitting upon the structure a book needs, searching for humanity amidst ongoing violence, and her new book Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood.
Also in this episode: -working as a journalist -becoming embedded in the story we’re covering -negotiating dangerous environments to gather information
Books mentioned in this episode: Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho It can take a really long time but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important or good.
Paula Delgado-Kling holds degrees in comparative literature/French civilizations, international affairs, and creative writing from Brown University, Columbia University, and The New School, respectively. Leonor, for which she received two grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, is her first book. Excerpts of this book have appeared in Narrative, The Literary Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and Happano.org in Japan. Her work for the Mexican monthly news magazine Gatopardo was nominated for the Simon Bolivar Award, Colombia’s top journalism prize, and anthologized in Las Mejores Crónicas de Gatopardo (Random House Mondadori, 2006). Born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Toronto, Canada, Delgado-Kling now splits her time between Boca Raton, FL and New York City. To learn more, please visit PaulaDelgadoKling.com or follow her on Instagram @PaulaDelgadoKling. Connect with Paula Website: http://pauladelgadokling.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091961238236 Twitter: https://twitter.com/ColombiaTalk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pauladelgadokling/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 29 Nov 2022 | 18. Crafting a Braided Memoir featuring Jamie Gehring | 00:38:52 | |
Jamie Gehring joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her braided memoir Madman in the Woods which details her and her family’s experience living next to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, how she incorporated and structured research, interviews, and her own memories, the challenge of organizing so much information, and why writers need to follow their instincts.
Also in this episode: -Not losing the reader -Getting it all onto the page -Intimate true crime as a genre
Books mentioned in this episode: ShadowMan: An Elusive Psycho Killer and the Birth of the FBI by Ron Franscell When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank Bookends by Zibby Owens Inside Passage by Keema Watrfield The Babysitter: My Summers with Serial Killer by Liza Rodman and Jennifer Jordan Knocked Down by Aileen Weintraub Educated by Tara Westover The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr The Stranger Beside Me: Ted Bundy: The Shocking Inside Story by Anne Rule The Fact of a Body: A Murder and a Memoir by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me: A Memoir by Sherman Alexie
Jamie Gehring is a Montana native who grew up sharing a backyard with Ted Kaczynski, the man widely known as the Unabomber. She was featured in Netflix’s Unabomber—In His Own Words where she discussed her family’s role in Ted’s capture.
Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamiegehring.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jamiegehringauthor/ Books: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781635768169 -- Ronit is a teacher and speaker whose essays, creative nonfiction, and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2023. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 20 Aug 2024 | 112. Deep Love, Deep Honesty featuring Lola Milholland | 00:43:15 | |
Lola Milholland joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about communal living and interconnection, writing about food and its impact on our sense of home and culture, writing about loved ones with honesty, not sharing early drafts, exploring material that calls to us energetically, going directly to publishers, the role of privacy and boundaries in our lives and her new book Group Living and Other Recipes.
Also in this episode: -food and culture -commune cookbooks -searching acknowledgement pages for publishers
Books mentioned in this episode: Vibration Cooking by Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor My Picture Diary by Fujiwara Maki Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward Holy Land by DJ Waldie Lola Milholland is a food-business owner and writer. A former editor for Edible Portland magazine, she currently lives in Portland, Oregon, and runs Umi Organic, a noodle company with a commitment to providing nutritious public school lunch. Her debut book, GROUP LIVING AND OTHER RECIPES, will be published by Spiegel & Grau in August 2024. Connect with Lola: Website: www.lolasbeef.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lolamilho Get Lola’s Book: https://www.spiegelandgrau.com/group-living/ — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 24 Dec 2024 | 140. A Love-Hate Social Media and Publishing Relationship featuring Kristen Van Nest | 00:43:42 | |
Kristen Van Nest joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how discovered who she was on a global stage and her addiction to travel, loving the growth phase of new projects, how improv and stand up improves our writing, writing funny and the architecture of a joke, having a love-hate relationship with social media and publishing, keeping your ideal reader in mind, marketing our work ourselves and hustling to get our book in front of people, hammering in the theme in our manuscripts, publishing in literary reviews, establishing publishing proofpoints, cold pitching 150 agents, selling on proposal, and her memoir Where to Nest: A Global Search for Love, Cheap Wine and a Place to Belong.
Also mentioned in this episode: -ghost cities -bad roommates -feeling culturally confused
Books mentioned in this episode: What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristen Newman Wild by Cheryl Strayed Books by David Sedaris
In her debut travel memoir Where to Nest (April 2, 2024, Rising Action Publishing Co.) Kristen Van Nest weaves an entertaining story for anyone who needs a good laugh, travel ideas, and inspiration for ways to add more joy into their lives.
After college getting her dream job in New York City, Kristen thought she had everything a modern Millennial was supposed to want: a sexy zip code, a boyfriend, and a corporate job.
But instead of feeling content, she soon realized she had no idea who she was and what made her happy. Naturally, she did what any sane person would do: hopped on a plane and spent the rest of her twenties living abroad and traveling the world in search of love, adventure, and new and exciting places to eat bread.
By stripping away the cultural norms and expectations she grew up with in the US, she rebuilt from scratch a new identity, sense of self, and life purpose that ultimately led her to move to Los Angeles to pursue comedy. Through living in Luxembourg on a Fulbright Scholarship and then in China for three years working for a wine importer, Where to Nest takes us across the globe–including nearly being murdered by a lover while skiing in Switzerland, navigating Greece during a banking crisis, and visiting Thailand during a government coup–as a woman struggles to find belonging.
Connect with Kristen: Website: www.kristenvannest.com On all channels @KristenVanNest Link Order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1990253571 YouTube channel on how to work smarter to live better: https://www.youtube.com/c/KristenVanNest
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 19 Sep 2023 | 48. Writing into Structure featuring Clare Frank | 00:40:47 | |
Clare Frank joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing a female-career-centered memoir, letting structure dictate content, when an agent really loves your voice but doesn’t think they can sell your book, the lifelong relationship she’s had with fire, and her new memoir Burnt.
Also in this episode: -using NaNoRiMo to draft your book -embracing the suck -when your sibling is also writing a memoir
Book mentioned in this episode: Books by Caitlin Doughty Ambulance Driver by Kevin Hazard Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls This is the Story of a Happy Marriage by Ann Patchett
Clare Frank served as the State of California’s first and only female Chief of Fire Protection. She began firefighting at age 17 and worked her way through the ranks, handling all types of fire and rescue emergencies and major disasters in both urban and rural settings. Along the way, she earned a bachelor’s in fire administration, a law degree and bar card, and a master’s in creative writing. Most recently, she is the author of BURNT: A Memoir of Fighting Fire. She lives near Lake Tahoe with her husband and always a dog or two
Connect with Clare: Book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/burnt-a-memoir-of-fighting-fire-clare-frank/18699323?ean=9781419763908 Website: https://www.therealclarefrank.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/firewriter1/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100009533621822 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clare-frank-64a2a2236/
– Ronit’s writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards and the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE was named winner of Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and Finalist in the 2023 Page Turner Awards. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 25 Apr 2023 | 4p The Spiritual Memoir featuring Sarah Birnbach | 00:39:53 | |
Sarah Birnbach joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about grief and the wished-for mother, how Jewish prayer anchored her as she mourned the father she adored, birth order and responsibility, how spirituality has shaped her, deciding how much to share about her painful relationship with her mother, and publishing her memoir A Daughter’s Kaddish later in life.
Also in this episode: -not throwing those we have conflict with under the bus -feminism in Judaism -community as a balm for grief
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
Sarah Birnbach spent 35 years as a human resource management consultant helping organizations to achieve peak performance, and was a sought-after speaker at conferences across multiple industries. As a licensed clinical social worker, she worked as a family therapist in a juvenile and domestic relations court, and became a certified journal facilitator in 2010.
In her “encore career” as a writer and author, Sarah is a six-time award winner in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and her articles have appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals, as well as the Washington Jewish Week and the Jerusalem Post. Her memoir, A Daughter’s Kaddish, follows her journey through the year after her father’s death.
She lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband and enjoys traveling and being Grandma to her seven grandchildren.
Connect with Sarah: Website: www.sarahbirnbach.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarah_birnbach Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SarahBirnbachWriterAuthor/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahsheilabirnbach/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah.birnbach/
–
Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 Nov 2024 | 131. Legitimizing Our Own Experience Through Memoir featuring Anne Pinkerton | 00:47:39 | |
Anne Pinkerton joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about processing the loss of her older brother David, how brothers and sisters get short shrift when it comes to grief in our culture, her Writing Through Loss workshops, disenfranchised grief, when family members are private people, owning our story, taking breaks, giving ourselves grace, and learning how to take care of ourselves when writing about grief, treating our characters with love and care, when family doesn’t read our memoirs, feeling protective of our own experience, and her memoir Were You Close? A Sister's Quest to Know the Brother She Lost.
Also in this episode: -bereavement writing group -how grief messes with our executive function -providing consolation for other grieving siblings
Books mentioned in this episode: The Empty Room by Elizabeth Davida Rayburn Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Wild by Cheryl Strayed Into Thin Air by John Krakauer History of a Suicide by Jill Invisible Sisters Jessica Handler 100 Tricks Any Boy Can Do by Kim Stafford
Anne Pinkerton is the author of Were You Close? a sister's quest to know the brother she lost (Vine Leaves Press, 2023). Her essays and poems have appeared in the Boston Globe, Hippocampus Magazine, Modern Loss, “Beautiful Things” at River Teeth Journal, and Sunlight Press, among other publications, as well as the anthologies The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink and Nothing Divine Dies: A Poetry Anthology About Nature. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University and pays the bills as a marketing communications professional. Connect with Anne: Website: https://annepinkertonwriter.com/ Were You Close? https://annepinkertonwriter.com/the-book/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AnnePinkertonWriter Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/annepinkertonwriter TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@annepinkertonwriter
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 28 Feb 2023 | 31. Language, Lyricism, and Sound featuring Suzanne Roberts | 00:46:05 | |
Suzanne Roberts joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the difficulty of being in a human body - especially a woman’s, the male gaze, deciding how to approach our work, writing about loss, grief, death, and desire, reading widely and deeply, being an employee to our art, and Animal Bodies, her memoir made of lyrical essays, narrative pieces, and prose poems.
Also in this episode: -when the body becomes political -how poetry has informed her work -a tool to get yourself to write even material that you most fear sharing
Books mentioned in this episode: The Rules of Inheritance by Claire Bidwell Smith Guidebook to Relative Strangers by Camille Dungy Soil: A Black Mother’s Garden by Camille Dungy What You Have Heard is True by Carolyn Forché The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Rojas Contreras Lying by Lauren Slater Constellations: Reflections from Life by Sinead Gleeson Drawing Breath by Gayle Brandeis Burnt: A Memoir of Fighting Fire by Clare Frank The Abacus of Loss by Sholeh Wolpé Trespass by Amy Irvine Trailed by Kathryn Miles Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit by Jeanette Winterson Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
Suzanne Roberts is the author of the award-winning essay collection Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties (March 2022), the award-winning travel memoir in essays Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (2020), and the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award), as well as four books of poems. Named "The Next Great Travel Writer" by National Geographic's Traveler, Suzanne's work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays and included in The Best Women's Travel Writing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Rumpus, Hippocampus, The Normal School, River Teeth, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada-Reno, teaches in the low residency MFA program in creative writing at UNR-Tahoe, and splits her time between South Lake Tahoe, California and an old green van named Shrek.
Connect with Suzanne: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/suzanneroberts28/?hl=en Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/suzanne.roberts.798 Website: https://www.suzanneroberts.net/
-- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 29 Mar 2022 | 4. Finding the Thread featuring Ellen Blum Barish | 00:32:43 | |
Ellen Blum Barish joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about becoming a memoirist after a career as a journalist and how that deepened her love of writing, the power of working on smaller pieces as we craft our memoir, and finding the themes and structure in our story. Also in this episode: -Ellen’s Eight Essential Elements of Essay -Writing about the people we love -Knowing where to begin and where to end
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by Jean-Dominique Bauby The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Inheritence by Dani Shapiro What Comes Next and How to Like It by Abigail Thomas Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas One Hundred Names for Love Diane Ackerman Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Greely Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
Ellen Blum Barish is the author of Seven Springs: A Memoir (Shanti Arts, 2021) and Views from the Home Office Window (Adams Street Publishing, 2007). You can find her work in Brevity’s Blog, Full Grown People, Literary Mama, Tablet and The Chicago Tribune. Many of her essays have aired on Chicago Public Radio and have been told on storytelling stages around Chicago. Ellen founded the literary publication Thread, which earned four notables in Best American Essays and has taught writing at Northwestern University where she earned a master’s in journalism. She works privately with writers and teaches writing workshops on essay collections and memoir. Seven Springs: A Memoir: http://www.shantiarts.co/uploads/files/abc/BARISH_SEVEN.html Seven Springs: A Memoir (audiobook on Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Seven-Springs-A-Memoir/dp/B09BDBM1FD/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Website: https://ellenblumbarish.com Coaching: https://ellenblumbarish.com/coaching/ Blog on Craft, Creativity & Commotion: https://ellenblumbarish.com/blog/ E-Guides “Writing Your Marker Story” & “Ellen’s Eight Essential Elements of Essay” https://ellenblumbarish.com/guides/ Upcoming Workshops: https://ellenblumbarish.com/workshops/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ellenblumbarish/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EllenBlumBarish Twitter: LinkedIn:
Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 06 Aug 2024 | 110. Coming to Grips with Vulnerability on the Page featuring Danielle M. Bryan | 00:39:54 | |
Danielle M. Bryan joins me for a conversation about how she coped with cascading life adversities including multiple sclerosis and divorce, what it was like for her to share deeply emotional experiences on the page, leading with vulnerability, her decision to use a pseudonym, working with a developmental editor, using a hybrid publisher, creating the space and time for what we need personally and creatively, and her new memoir Unparalyzed: Beating an Invisible Pre-Midlife Crisis
Also in this episode: -the toll of autoimmune disease -reshaping our stories -taking solo trips to create
Books mentioned in this episode: -Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert -Love Sick by Cory Martin
By day, Danielle M. Bryan is a non-profit executive leader and a board member. She is a proud Jamaican-American, a wife, a mother, a daughter and an avid lover of international travel. So far, Danielle’s international travel destinations have included the Bahamas, the Dominican Republic, France, Greece, Indonesia , Jamaica, Mexico, Morocco, South Africa, Turkey, Italy, Belize and Canada! London and Munich are next up – this Summer, in June! Similar to her passion for traveling, Danielle developed a love for expressing herself through written words and through story-telling. She describes her debut memoir as the story that found her after life threw her a few curve balls and she decided to use her journey and the lessons she learned along the way to inspire others.
Connect with Danielle: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/authordbry/ Website: https://www.unparalyzedmemoir.com/ Get her book: https://a.co/d/iyqrhA3 https://www.archwaypublishing.com/en/bookstore/bookdetails/856866-unparalyzed https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/unparalyzed-danielle-m-bryan/1144672859?ean=9781665753326 — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 Mar 2023 | 32. The Intersection of Race, Privilege, and Addiction in Memoir featuring Laura Cathcart Robbins | 00:39:29 | |
Laura Cathcart Robbins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing Stash, her new memoir that delves into addiction, privilege, and race, what self-care looked like for her while she tackled traumatic material, why she had to let go of controlling the narrative to better serve her story, and depicting the physical impact of addiction on the page.
Also in this episode: -Laura’s wildly popular podcast The Only One in the Room -the importance of journals -sharing a manuscript with family and exes
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamont Dry by Augustus Burrows Wild by Cheryl Strayed Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert California Soul by Keith Corbin Educated by Tara Westover
Laura Cathcart Robbin is the host of the popular podcast, The Only One In The Room, and author of the forthcoming Atria/Simon & Schuster memoir, STASH (due out in spring of 2023). She has been active for many years as a speaker and school trustee and is credited for creating The Buckley School’s nationally recognized committee on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice. Her recent articles in Huffpo and The Temper on the subjects of race, recovery, and divorce have garnered her worldwide acclaim. She is a LA Moth StorySlam winner and currently sits on the advisory boards of the San Diego Writer’s Festival and the Outliers HQ podcast Festival. Find out more about her on her website, or you can look for her on Facebook, on Instagram, and follow her on Twitter.
Connect with Laura: Laura's Podcast: https://theonlyonepod.com/ Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHRtdMgfXBbfvb6YkJr2qQw Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theonlyoneintheroom/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/theonlyoneintheroom Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheOnlyOnePodc1 Laura's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lauracathcartrobbins/ Huffpost Profile: https://www.huffpost.com/author/laura-cathcart-robbins Laura's Website: http://www.lauracathcartrobbins.com/ -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 01 Oct 2024 | 122. Uncovering a Lost Family History featuring Margaret Juhae Lee | 00:37:25 | |
Margaret Juhae Lee joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about searching for her family’s lost history, growing up as a first generation Korean American living in Houston, archival work and interviewing relatives, capturing family voice, why we search to understand painful things, knowing ourselves as writers, finding structure later, the time to digest material, reading historical fiction with a critical eye, generative writing workshops, curbing self-editing tendencies, what home means, not giving up, and her memoir Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History.
Also in this episode: -conveying immediacy through present tense -investigative journalism -writing in community
Books mentioned in this episode: -The Situation and the Story by Vivan Gornick -All other books by Vivian Gornick
Margaret Juhae Lee is the author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History (Melville House). A former editor at The Nation magazine, she received a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korea Foundation. Her articles have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Rumpus and Writer's Digest. She lives in Oakland with her family and Brownie, a rescue dog from Korea. Connect with Margaret: Website: www.margaretjuhaelee.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjuhae X: https://x.com/margaretjuhae Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margaret.lee.790 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-juhae-lee-2b95905/ Starry Field: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741044/starry-field-by-margaret-juhae-lee/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 05 Mar 2024 | 79. Understanding How to Let Go featuring Ann Batchelder | 00:32:14 | |
Ann Batchelder joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about using myth as a jumping point for interpreting ourselves, trusting intuition, the idea of mother failure, regret and letting go, addiction and recovery in loved ones, mental health stigma, deciding when to show loved ones the manuscript, and her memoir Craving Spring: A Mother’s Quest, a Daughter’s Depression, and the Greek Myth that Brought Them Together.
Also in this episode: -how stories save us -Alanon -mother guilt
Books mentioned in this episode: Beautiful Boy by David Sheff Wild by Cheryl Strayed Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald Eating in the Light of the Moon by Dr. Anita Johnston Work by Pema Chodron Work by Tara Brach
Ann Batchelder is the author of Craving Spring: A Mother’s Quest, a Daughter’s Depression, and the Greek Myth that Brought Them Together. She served as Editor of FIBERARTS Magazine, was guest curator for the Asheville Art Museum where she designed and developed three major contemporary art exhibitions featuring artists such as Louise Bourgeois, Ann Hamilton, Sally Mann, Maya Lin, and Laurie Anderson, and was Director of Special Events for the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Ann earned an MSW in psychotherapy and is the mother of two adult children. Connect with Ann: Website: https://www.annbatchelder.com Facebook: https://facebook.com/ann.batchelder.9 Instagram: https://instagram.com/annbatchelder
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 Feb 2023 | 28. Resisting Self-Pity in Memoir featuring Maria Giura | 00:39:25 | |
Maria Giura joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about which stories define us, avoiding the self-pity trap, the importance of allowing the reader to make decisions about the characters in our memoir for themselves, how we frame childhood and family dynamics, writing about the very early versions of ourselves after we’ve changed so much, and what challenges she faced writing Celibate in which she explores her relationship with the priest she fell in love with and how that experience helped her discover the life she wanted to live. Also in this episode: -shutting out the voices that tell you not to share your story -gaining the perspective our narratives need -how The Church and her faith guide her Books mentioned in this episode: The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard Limbo by A. Manette Ansay The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo
Maria Giura is the author of Celibate: A Memoir, which won a First Place Independent Press Award, and What My Father Taught Me, which was a Paterson Poetry Book Prize finalist. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in several journals including New York Quarterly, Prime Number, Vita Poetica, Presence, Italian Americana, Lips, and Tiferet. An Academy of American Poets winner, Giura has taught writing at multiple universities including Binghamton University where she received her PhD in English. She currently teaches memoir workshops for Casa Belvedere Cultural Foundation. Follow her on Instagram @marigiurawrites, on Fb and at mariagiura.com
Connect with Maria: Website: mariagiura.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mariagiurawrites/ Facebook:: facebook.com/maria.giura.3975/ Courses: casa-belvedere.org/product/virtual-writing-workshop-writing-your-memories-gifts-given-and-received/ Purchase Maria’s book, Celibate: barnesandnoble.com/w/celibate-maria-giura/1131505200?ean=9781627202145 shop.aer.io/apprenticehouse/p/Celibate_A_Memoir/9781627202145-4208?collection=/0 bookshop.org/books/celibate-a-memoir/9781627202145
– Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 08 Apr 2025 | 162. Finding Patterns and Switching Lenses featuring Bridgett M. Davis | 00:39:47 | |
Bridgett M. Davis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the effect of trauma and weathering on Black lives, the unique bond between sisters, showing relationships in action and dialogue, homing in on a throughline, giving our books and writing the space they need,finding patterns and switching lenses, exploring varying lived experiences within family structures, shedding light on Lupus, the physiological effects of systemic racism, Black maternal mortality, moments of heartbreak, asking important narrative questions early on, the letters her sister wrote to her, and her new memoir Love, Rita.
Also in this episode: -birth order -getting a book optioned or film -shifting points of view
Books mentioned in this episode: -The Situations and the Story by Vivian Gornick -Inventing the Truth by William Zisner -The Yellow House by Sarah -Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway -The Invisible Kingdom by Megan O’Rourke -Fairy Land by Alisha Abbott -Gather Me by Glory Adams
Bridgett M. Davis (pronounced Brih-jet) is the author of the memoir, Love, Rita, published by Harper Books in spring 2025.Her first memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine, and featured as a clue on the quiz show Jeopardy! The upcoming film adaptation will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures. She is author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow, named a Best Book of 2014 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and Shifting Through Neutral, shortlisted for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award. Davis is also writer/director of the 1996 award-winning feature film Naked Acts, newly restored and released to critical acclaim, screening in theaters across the US and globally and now available on DVD, Blu Ray and select streaming services. Davis is Professor Emerita in the journalism department at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she has taught creative, narrative and film writing. Her essays have appeared most recently in The New York Times, the LA Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia Journalism School, she lives in Brooklyn with her family. Visit her website at www.bridgettdavis.com.\
Connect with Bridgett: Website: bridgettdavis.com Facebook: bridgettdavis Bluesky: bridgettmdavis.bsky.social IG: https://www.instagram.com/bridgett_d substack: bridgettmdavis.substack.com Links for book purchase: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/love-rita-bridgett-m-davis?variant=43263953174562 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-rita-a-sister-s-story-bridgett-m-davis/21696108
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 10 May 2022 | 10. The Merits of Writing About Trauma with Restraint featuring Kelly Sundberg | 00:30:10 | |
Kelly Sundberg joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about sharing her story of domestic violence with the world, depicting trauma and triggering events in memoir, the alchemical value of PTSD, navigating the privacy of others, and incorporating essays in manuscripts. Also in this episode: -using direct address in memoir -the publisher’s vision vs. the writer’s -lyric essays and poetry for memoirists
Books and articles mentioned in this episode: Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch A Fortune for your Disaster by Hanif Abdurraqub Bluets by Maggie Nelson “It Will Look Like a Sunset” https://www.guernicamag.com/it-will-look-like-a-sunset/ “Ritchie County Mall” https://gay.medium.com/ritchie-county-mall-7b30b96731f6 “Every Line is a Scream” https://gay.medium.com/every-line-is-a-scream-3ed54c727619
Kelly Sundberg's memoir, Goodbye, Sweet Girl, was published by HarperCollins in 2018. Her essays have appeared in The New York Times Modern Love, Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Denver Quarterly, Slice, and many other literary and commercial magazines. Her essay “It Will Look Like a Sunset” was selected for inclusion in The Best American Essays 2015, and other essays have been listed as notables in The Best American Essays 2013, 2016, and 2018. She has a PhD in creative nonfiction from Ohio University and has been the recipient of fellowships or grants from Vermont Studio Center, A Room of Her Own Foundation, Dickinson House, and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was recently awarded a 2021 Individual Excellence Award from the Ohio Arts Council, and she is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashland University in Ashland, Ohio.
https://twitter.com/K_O_Sundberg https://www.instagram.com/ksundber/ -- Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 11 Jun 2024 | 100. Holding Space to Write the Truth of Our Lives featuring Linda Joy Myers | 00:37:58 | |
Linda Joy Myers, founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers and memoir coach joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about helping memoirists become their own good editors, keeping both the vertical and linear in mind when writing our stories, the importance of breaks when working on traumatic material, how writing puts our experience in perspective, finding a writing cohort, leaving bad writing groups, what we remember vs. what really happened, why truth is complicated, and the evolution of memoir.
Also in this episode: -her latest class offerings -fending off the inner critic -the promise we make to the reader
Books mentioned in this episode: -Bluets by Maggie Nelson -In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado -You Could Make this Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith -Wild by Cheryl Strayed -Books by Abigail Thomas
Linda Joy Myers, founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers, is the author of award-winning memoirs Don't Call Me Mother and Song of the Plains, and two books on craft The Power of Memoir, & Journey of Memoir. She co-authored Breaking Ground on Your Memoir and Magic of Memoir & co-teaches Write Your Memoir in Six Months with Brooke Warner. A memoir coach for 30 years, she helps writers find their voice and get their story into the world. Linda Joy’s prize-winning first novel, The Forger of Marseille was released in 2023.
Connect with Linda: http://lindajoymyersauthor.com https://www.facebook.com/linda.j.myers https://www.instagram.com/lindajoymyersauthor/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindajoy/
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 26 Mar 2024 | 85. Having Roots and Losing Them: Writing About the Crisis in Venezuela Through Memoir featuring Paula Ramón | 00:45:17 | |
Paula Ramón joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pivoting from journalism to memoir to tell the story of Venezuela’s collapse, understanding the history of her country before and after Chavez through her mother’s life, guilt, the physical and emotional losses she and her family have faced, the concept of democracy, when there’s no future in your country, emotional warfare and shrinking resources, the toll of migration on the body, and her memoir Motherland.
Also in this episode: -working with translators -putting human faces to the facts -memoir as legacy
Books mentioned in this episode: La plaça del Diamant /The Time of the Doves by Mercè Rodoreda
Paula Ramón is a Venezuelan journalist who has lived and worked in China, the United States, Brazil, and Uruguay. She is currently a correspondent for Agence France-Presse, based in Los Angeles. She has written and reported for the New York Times, National Geographic, Columbia Journalism Review, and Piauí magazine, among other outlets.
Connect with Paula: X: https://twitter.com/paulacramon
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 05 Apr 2022 | 5. Doing Whatever it Takes to Get Yourself to Write featuring Andrea Ross | 00:32:21 | |
Andrea Ross joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about battling memoir imposter syndrome, choosing scene over exposition, doing whatever it takes to get yourself to write, and how she used the wilderness to help tell her story and convey the particular brand of loneliness that adopted people experience.
Also in this episode: -what new writers sometimes forget -promoting your book -publishing with a small press
Memoirs in this episode: Unnatural Selection by Andrea Ross Wild by Cheryl Strayed The Liars’ Club by Mary Karr Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden The Mistress's Daughter by A.M. Homes
Bio: Andrea Ross's memoir, Unnatural Selection, about her years as a wilderness guide searching for her biological family, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Huffington Post, Terrain The Conversation, Mountain Gazette, and many other outlets. During the 1980s and 1990s, Andrea worked throughout the American West as a wilderness guide, a National Park Service Ranger, and a backcountry Search and Rescue leader. She is a faculty member in the University Writing Program at UC Davis.
Links: website: andrearosswriter.com link to buy book: https://www.cavankerrypress.org/product/unnatural-selection/ twitter: https://twitter.com/Andrea_M_Ross insta: https://www.instagram.com/andrearosswriter/ facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/rossandream
Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 22 Feb 2024 | 77. Following Creative Hunches and the Magic of Revision featuring Joni B. Cole | 00:43:16 | |
Joni B. Cole joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about following our creative hunches, what to look for in workshop groups and writing teachers, the power of positive reinforcement, the magic of revision, the right to tell our stories, her approach to teaching, the writer’s center she founded in White River Junction, Vermont and her new book of essays Party Like It’s 2044: Finding the Funny in Life and Death.
Also in this episode: -connecting with other writers -checking in on our expectations -celebrating ourselves
Books mentioned in this episode: Growing Up by Russell Baker One Writer’s Beginnings by Eudora Welty Spare by Prince Harry the Duke of Sussex Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay Shrill by Lindy West
Joni B. Cole is the author of seven books, including the new release "Party Like It’s 2044: Finding the Funny in Life and Death," and two acclaimed writing guides: "Good Naked: How to Write More, Write Better, and Be Happier" (listed as a “Best Books for Writers” by Poets & Writers magazine) and "Toxic Feedback: Helping Writers Survive and Thrive" ("I can't imagine a better guide to writing's rewards and perils than this fine book,” American Book Review). For over twenty-five years she has taught creative writing to adults through her own writer’s center in White River Junction, Vermont, through the Dartmouth Writer’s Society, and at a diversity of academic and nonprofit programs across the country. She is a contributor to The Writer magazine and Jane Friedman blog, and hosts the podcast “Author, Can I Ask You?”
Connect with Joni: Website: www.jonibcole.com The Writer’s Center of WRJ: www.thewriterscenterwrj.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joni.b.colewriter Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joni.cole.9
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 25 Apr 2024 | 92. Protecting Ourselves When Writing About Others featuring Cait West | 00:52:11 | |
Cait West joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in and leaving Christian patriarchy, indoctrination, identifying and writing about the rifts she felt in herself and her family, gender oppression, using geology as a metaphor, moving from memoir in essays to a more linear form, ethical and legal concerns when writing about others, coming to grips with abuse, purity culture, and her memoir Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy. Also in this episode: -protecting anonymity in those we write about -trauma therapy -protecting ourselves by taking breaks when writing
Books mentioned in this episode: -Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies -Flesh and Blood by N. West Moss -Wiving by Caityln Myer
Cait West is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work has been published in The Revealer, Religion Dispatches, Fourth Genre, and Hawai`i Pacific Review, among others. As an advocate and a survivor of the Christian patriarchy movement, she serves on the editorial board for Tears of Eden, a nonprofit providing resources for survivors of spiritual abuse, and cohosts the podcast Survivors Discuss. Her debut memoir, Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy, releases on April 30, 2024.
Connect with Cait: Website: https://www.caitwest.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitwestwrites TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@caitwestwrites Substack: https://caitwest.substack.com/ Get Cait’s Book: https://www.caitwest.com/book — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 27 Aug 2024 | 113. The Forgiveness Tour featuring Susan Shapiro | 00:40:14 | |
Susan Shapiro joins Let’s Talk Memoir for part one of our conversation about the nature of forgiveness and why she wrote a memoir about it, being a multiple-memoir writer, why she’s glad her latest took 12 years to complete, starting a memoir with a question, the importance of mentors to our work and life, the nature of therapeutic relationships, overcoming addiction, avoiding kvetch-fests in our pages, working on other projects simultaneously, writing groups, and her memoir The Forgiveness Tour.
Also in this episode: -the best way to launch a memoir -good apologies -father figures
Susan Shapiro is an award winning writing professor and the bestselling author of many books her family hates, like the memoirs Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Lighting Up and The Forgiveness Tour, out in paperback July 23. She's coauthor of Unhooked, The Bosnia List and American Shield. She's freelanced for the New York Times, WSJ, Washington Post, Newsweek, Wired, Elle, The Cut, Oprah and New Yorker magazines online. She lives in Manhattan with her scriptwriter husband and uses her publishing guides "The Byline Bible" and "The Book Bible" for the popular classes she teaches at NYU, The New School, Columbia University and now online. You can follow her on Instagram at @profsue123. Connect with Susan: Website: https://Susanshapiro.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susanshapironet Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profsue123/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Susanshapironet LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-shapiro-9171755/
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 13 Feb 2025 | 150. Writing a Memoir in Three Months featuring Barrie Miskin | 00:32:02 | |
Barrie Miskin joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the rare dissociative disorder she experienced while pregnant and her experience navigating the maternal and mental health care system, the guilt and shame so often connected to motherhood and womanhood, the sweet spot of writing a year into her full recovery, balancing memoir writing with privacy and community, owning who we are and what we need to write, helping people feel seen, protection within the writing process, letting loved ones read our work before publication, writing a memoir in three months, and her new memoir Hell Gate Bridge.
Also in this episode: -maternal mental health crises -cognitive behavioral therapy -writing fast
Books mentioned in this episode -Inferno: A Memoir of Motherhood and Madness by Catherine Cho -Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan -After the Eclipse: A Mother’s Murder, a Daughter’s Search by Sarah Perry -Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad
Barrie Miskin's writing has appeared in Hobart, Narratively, Expat Press and elsewhere. Her interviews can be found in Write or Die magazine, where she is a regular contributor. Barrie is also a teacher in Astoria, New York, where she lives with her husband and daughter. Hell Gate Bridge is her first book. Connect with Barrie: Website: barriemiskin.com Instagram: @barrie_m X: @bmcintyre1000 – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 28 May 2024 | 98. The Immersive, Lyric Memoir and Becoming Unstuck from Shame featuring Anne Gudger | 00:40:47 | |
Anne Gudger joins Let’s Talk memoir for a conversation about loss and choosing love every day, giving grief a microphone, voice-driven writing and breaking structure rules, essays for platform-building, holding both the raw experience and the long view, the legacy of shame and becoming unstuck, shifting energy in our bodies, and the metaphysical and spiritual components of her memoir The Fifth Chamber.
Also in this episode: -journaling as source material -normalizing grief -taking care ourselves when working on painful material
Books mentioned in this episode: Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch Bluets by Maggie Nelson Group by Christie Tate
Anne Gudger is a memoir/essay writer who writes hard and loves harder. She’s the author of THE FIFTH CHAMBER, published by Jaded Ibis Press September 2023. She's been published in multiple journals including The Rumpus, Real Simple Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Sweet Lit, Cutthroat, CutBank, Columbia Journal, The Normal School, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She's won four essay contests and has been a Best of the Net Nominee twice. March 2020 she and her daughter founded Coffee and Grief: a community that includes a monthly reading series. Everybody grieves and when we share grief we feel less alone. She also co-created the podcast: Coffee, Grief, and Gratitude. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her beloved husband.
Connect with Anne: Website: https://www.annegudger.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegudger/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anne.gudger Get Anne’s Book: https://bit.ly/3nZIvEy Write Your Grief Out: https://writeyourgriefout.thinkific.com/courses/writeyourgriefoutOct
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 28 Jan 2025 | 146. Permission to Be Ourselves featuring Minelle Mahtani | 00:41:57 | |
Minelle Mahtani joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the grief, love, loss, and repair in losing her mother while finding her voice, noncolonial ways of thinking about stories, writing about her Indian, Iranian, and Canadian identities, what the sound of our voice is worth, paying attention to what we pay attention to, permission to be ourselves, having fun while trying to write precisely about grief, emotional trauma commonalities, her Canadian radio show Sense of Place, how kind we can bear to be to ourselves, listening as a political act, and her new memoir May it Have a Happy Ending.
Ronit’s upcoming 10-week online memoir course: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story
Also in this episode: -sibling approaches to grief and losing parents -cocooning -feminist geography
Books mentioned in this episode: Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin The Story Game by Shze-Hui Tjoa Books by Julietta Singh
Minelle Mahtani is a Muslim Iranian/Indian/Canadian writer, former TV producer and radio host who teaches at University of British Columbia. Her memoir, “May It Have a Happy Ending” has been called a “magnificent and stunning debut…a gorgeous prism of stories.” She has been nominated for two national magazine awards and won a gold medal for best personal essay in th Digital Publishing Awards. She is the author of the book “Mixed Race Amnesia: Resisting the Romanticization of Multiraciality.” Her work has appeared in Geist, Maisonneuve and is forthcoming in Southeast Review.
Connect with Minelle: Website: www.minellemahtani.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/minellewrites Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/minelle.mahtani/ – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 18 Feb 2025 | 151. Putting the Less Than Heroic Parts of Ourselves on the Page featuring Casey Mulligan Walsh | 00:50:39 | |
Casey Mulligan Walsh joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the search for belonging in the wake of repeated loss, learning to live with grief alongside joy, finding a purpose for our story, homing in on the aboutness, patterns and themes in our memoir, managing flashbacks and whether or not to use them, setting up the essential question for your book, whether or not to have a prologue, landing on the structure, how our writing impacts others, tightening work, consolidating scenes, and cutting where necessary, embracing life in its messy complexity, and her new memoir The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared.
Ronit’s upcoming memoir course: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story
Also in this episode: -building a book launch team -supporting other writers -the challenges and benefits of critique groups
Books mentioned in this episode: The Fact of a Body by Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman Love in the Archives by Eileen Vorbach Collins Growth by Karen Debonis Wild by Cheryl Strayed Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody Seven Drafts by Allison K. Williams The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith
Casey Mulligan Walsh writes about life at the intersection of grief and joy, embracing uncertainty, and the nature of true belonging. She has written for The New York Times, HuffPost, Next Avenue, Modern Loss, Hippocampus, Barren Magazine, and numerous other literary journals and anthologies. Her essay, “Still,” published in Split Lip, was nominated for Best of the Net. Her memoir, The Full Catastrophe: All I Ever Wanted, Everything I Feared, is forthcoming from Motina Books on February 18, 2025. She is a founding editor of In a Flash literary magazine and serves as an ambassador and Board member for the Family Heart Foundation. Casey lives in upstate New York with her husband, Kevin and too many books to count. Find Casey at www.caseymulliganwalsh.com. Connect with Casey: Facebook @Casey Mulligan Walsh @Casey Mulligan Walsh, Author Instagram https://www.instagram.com/caseymulliganwalsh X: http://x.com/@CMulliganWalsh Threads @caseymulliganwalsh BlueSky @caseymulliganwalsh LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/casey-mulligan-walsh-522ba231/ Get her book on Amazon: https://a.co/d/4ZyHXNR Also at your local independent bookstore and wherever books are sold. | |||
| 17 Dec 2024 | 139. Stepping Outside the Box featuring Jennifer Lang | 00:36:24 | |
Jennifer Lang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about asking the right questions, understanding what home means and where it is, being sure to put your story in the narrative you’re sharing, her sense of self on and off the yoga mat, answers to mid-life questions, learning to write flash prose, putting manuscripts away for a while, being a Jewish writer living in Israel, leaning into experimental and playful prose, coping with imminent empty nests, and her new book Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces & Poses.
Also mentioned in this episode -self-doubt and self censoring -reading our work aloud -honing skills as an editor
Books mentioned in this episode: -Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg -Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krass Rosenthal
Jennifer Lang is a San Francisco Bay Area transplant in Tel Aviv. Last September, she gave birth to her first book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature; in October2024, she welcomes Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses into the world. A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Jennifer was an Assistant Editor at Brevity. Her prize-winning essays appear in Baltimore Review, Under the Sun, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. A longtime yoga instructor, she teaches YogaProse. Findable at www.israelwriterstudio.com Connect with Jennifer: Website: https://israelwriterstudio.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenlangwrites Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenlangwrites/ Ger her book: https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/landed-a-yogi-s-memoir-in-pieces-poses-by-jennifer-lang
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 15 Oct 2024 | 124. Excavating a Sister’s Story featuring Deborah Kasdan | 00:39:54 | |
Deborah Kasdan joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her older sister’s schizophrenia diagnosis, the decision to commit a child, family dynamics and epigenetics, what it is to be marginalized and hidden away, writing expressively, thematic and chronological decisions, digging further and digging deeper, the conflict alive inside us, landing on a book cover, finishing her sister’s story, guilt about our loved ones and giving them a voice in our work, and her memoir Roll Back the World.
Also mentioned in this episode: -sibling reaction to our memoirs -experimenting and trying again -writing the scenes that press themselves upon us
Books mentioned in this episode: -Is There No Place for Me by Susan Sheehan -The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut -The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks -The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok -The Soloist by Steve Lopez
Chosen as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie books of 2023, and a Foreword Reviews finalist, Deborah Kasdan’s memoir shows the impact of serious mental illness on her late sister Rachel, as well as on herself and their entire family. It also reveals the healing power of writing. Kasdan had a 35-year career writing about business and technology before retiring from corporate work and uncovering her creative side. Kasdan grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Norwalk, Connecticut with her husband. In addition to writing and making family history come alive, her times of greatest joy occur when she is reading, swimming or visiting with her four grandchildren. Connect with Deborah: Website: www.deborahkasdan.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debkasdan Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debkasdan
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 29 Aug 2024 | 115. Dismantling the Fear About Sharing Our Stories featuring Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD | 00:35:37 | |
Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about dismantling the fear about sharing our stories, finding the freedom to give voice to what we experienced, recognizing when the culture is the problem not us, unexpressed anger and chronic pain, memoir as a way to help family validate our experiences, the unseen messages girls and women get, why we must always follow up on queries, building platform, believing what we have to say is important, and her new book Sexism and Sensibility.
Also in this episode: -beyond girl power -making sure the pain we write about is processed -gender bias
Books mentioned in this episode: Hood Feminism by Mikki Kendall Girls and Sex by Peggy orenstein Why Does Patriarchy Persist by Carol Gilligan Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello Recollections of My Nonexistence Rebecca Solnit Girlhood by Melissa Febos
Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD, a clinical psychologist, trained at Harvard University and Northwestern University and now maintains a private clinical practice rooted in an understanding of how bias, social justice, and mental health intersect. An expert blogger for Psychology Today, her work has been highlighted in The New York Times, The Harvard Business Review, Women’s Health, Oprah Daily, and on HuffPost and CNN. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, and Your Teen, among other publications. Dr. Finkelstein has served on the board of the Chicago Chapter of the National Organization for Women, volunteered for Planned Parenthood PAC, and was an organizer for the Chicago Women’s March. She lives in Chicago, Illinois with her family and two beloved dogs. Connect with Jo-Ann Website: joannfinkelstein.com Substack: https://joannfinkelstein.substack.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joannfinkelstein.phd/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086974203277 X: https://twitter.com/finkeljo
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 13 Aug 2024 | 111. Making, Loving, and Losing Family featuring Jessica Fein | 00:37:36 | |
Jessica Fein joins Let’s talk Memoir for a conversation about making, loving and losing family, how we go from the desire to fix and control to understanding some things are out our hands, creating a life of meaning, memoir vs. a collection of essays, when the ending changes, being okay with revising, recognizing when our manuscripts need more work, navigating feedback, finding joy even in the context of extreme uncertainty and sadness, her podcast I Don’t Know How You Do It, living on the precipice, and her memoir Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes.
Also in this episode: -when our story isn’t ready -finding the beginning, middle, and end -surviving seemingly insurmountable circumstances
Books mentioned in this episode: The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr Books by Ellen Gilchrist
Jessica Fein is the author of Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes," and host of the "I Don't Know How You Do It” podcast, which features people whose lives seem unimaginable to others. She’s a seasoned media contributor, with forums including Newsweek, Psychology Today, The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Scary Mommy, and more. Jessica is a relentless warrior in the memory of her dynamic daughter whom she lost to rare disease in 2022. Her work encompasses hope and humor, grit and grace -- the tools that make up her personal survival kit. Jessica serves on the Board of Directors of MitoAction. She’s the mother of three, whom she and her husband adopted from Guatemala. They live outside of Boston with their quasi-service dog, who trained himself.
Connect with Jessica: Website: https://www.jessicafeinstories.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessica.fein.92/ LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jessica-fein-b643b09 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/feinjessica/ Book is available at the usual places: Amazon, Bookshop.org, B&N, etc. I Don’t Know How You Do It Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-dont-know-how-you-do-it/id1668168226
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 18 Mar 2025 | 158. Writing About a Past Where You Weren’t Present featuring Karen Kirsten | 00:40:54 | |
Karen Kirsten joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the messy complexity of family, asking the right questions, writing about a time in history when you weren’t present in that history, utilizing and incorporating primary research, recorded interviews, archived documents, diaries, film, and photographs into memoir, writing fact-based vivid scenes, working with historians to accurately depict world-altering events, being honest with the reader and grappling with conflicting information on the page, changing the central question of your memoir, being a detective and being dogged, having a care plan and a nurturing creative community, writing about transgenerational trauma, inserting yourself into the narrative as a character, and her new memoir Irina’s Gift.
Also in this episode: -structural changes late in the process -delaying reveals to add suspense -using image systems to address transgenerational trauma
Books mentioned in this episode:
The Fact of a Body by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich The Most Dangerous Book by Kevin Birmingham The Sinner and the Saint by Kevin Birmingham Fairyland by Alysia Abbott The Postcard by Anne Berest The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel WIlkers The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante Leviathan by Paul Auster Question 7 by Richard Flanagan Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories by Colombe Schneck Who I Always Was by Theresa Okokon
Karen Kirsten is the author of Irena’s Gift, a National Jewish Book Award finalist for Autobiography & Memoir, winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, and an Australian Jewish Book Award finalist. Irena’s Gift is also The Australian newspaper’s’notable book’, and described by Pulitzer prize winning author Geraldine Brooks as ”a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.”
Karen is an Australian-American writer and Holocaust educator who speaks around the world on the topics of hate and reconciliation. Karen’s essay “Searching for the Nazi Who Saved My Mother’s Life” was selected by Narratively as one of their Best Ever stories and nominated for The Best American Essays. Karen’s writing has also appeared in Salon.com, The Week, The Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post*, Boston’s National Public Radio station, The Boston Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, and more.
Connect with Karen: Website: https://www.karenkirsten.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/findingbabcie/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.kirsten Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747811/irenas-gift-by-karen-kirsten/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 14 Nov 2023 | 58. Choosing The Scenes That Stay featuring Leslie Ferguson | 00:46:28 | |
Leslie Ferguson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about surviving childhood trauma and her mother’s psychosis, approaching her manuscript through an editorial lens, the toll of insecure attachment, how writing the story that forged her helped her shed some of the pain she carried, and her approach to choosing scenes that stayed in her memoir When I Was Her Daughter.
Also in this episode: -the toll of abandonment -EMDR therapy -Reparenting the self
Books mentioned in this episode: Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Grand by Sarah Schaefer Blackout by Sarah Hepola Love Sick by Sue William Silverman Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Leslie Ferguson enjoyed a career as a high school English teacher and college writing instructor for two decades before relocating to San Diego to pursue work in the publishing industry. She holds an MFA in creative writing and an MA in English literature from Chapman University. Currently, Leslie sits on the Board of Directors of the International Memoir Writers Association, and she loves performing original stories and poems, which often center on hope and the consequences of trauma. As an editor and book doctor, one of Leslie’s passions is helping other writers tell their own stories with courage and emotional honesty. Her multi-award-winning debut memoir, When I Was Her Daughter, tells her story of madness, loss, and survival as a foster kid in the 1980s.
Connect with Leslie: Facebook Profile: https://www.facebook.com/leslie.ferguson.42/ Facebook Author Page: https://www.facebook.com/Lesliefergusonauthor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moreleslief/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leslie-ferguson-221a1890/ Website: LeslieFergusonAuthor.com Buy When I Was Her Daughter: Amazon :https://amzn.to/3SphWmY Barnes and noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/when-i-was-her-daughter-leslie-ferguson/1140422898?ean=9781952112775 Applebooks: https://books.apple.com/us/book/when-i-was-her-daughter/id1592175515 Kobo: https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/when-i-was-her-daughter BOOKSHOP.ORG: https://bookshop.org/books/when-i-was-her-daughter/9781952112782 Warwick’s: https://www.warwicks.com/book/9781952112775 Diesel books: https://www.dieselbookstore.com/book/9781952112775
– Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 05 Dec 2023 | 62. When Memoir Brings Loved Ones Closer featuring Lena Lee | 00:32:23 | |
Lena Lee joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about unresolved grief and permission to acknowledge our losses, sibling relationships over time, how memoir can bring us closer to loved ones, emotional distance in our narratives, taking care of ourselves when writing, and her memoir Girl Uprooted.
Also in this episode: -writing into vulnerability -paternal estrangement -connecting the dots in out stories
Books mentioned in this episode: Crying in the H Mart by Rachel Zauner Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu Born a Crime by Trevor Noah In Order to Live by Yeonmi Park A Dutiful Boy by Mohsin Zaidi
Lena Lee was born in South Korea but grew up moving countries every three years. As a Third Culture Kid, she has lived in Seoul, Paris, Oslo, Kuala Lumpur and New Jersey. After studying Human Sciences at Oxford University, Lena has been working in finance. Girl Uprooted is her first book. She lives in London, a place she now calls home(ish).
Connect with Lena Website: thelenalee.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thelenalee LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thelenalee Get Girl Uprooted: https://mybook.to/girluprooted – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 11 Mar 2025 | 156. Taking Power Back with the Stories We Are Called to Tell featuring Diane Vonglis Parnell | 00:41:17 | |
Diane Vonglis Parnell joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up with 9 siblings on an isolated farm under the tyranny of her abusive father and living in constant fear, homing in on the story we are called to tell, steering clear of portraying ourselves as victim or hero, not having closure, yearning for a mother, emotional absence, self-nurturing, trusting readers, the toll of secrets, changing names of family members, sharing manuscripts with siblings, writing about abusers, taking power back, and her new memoir The Taste of Anger.
Also in this episode: -the importance of therapy to memoirists -opting for a child narrator -writing about emotional neglect and depression
Books mentioned in this episode: The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealey Creep by Myriam Gurba
Diane Vonglis Parnell grew up on a remote farm in Western New York with nine siblings. Her essay Blame the Milkman was a winner in the Fish Publishing short memoir contest, and included in the Fish Anthology 2022. Vonglis Parnell is a Scrabble enthusiast, and a lover of progressive rock music. She serves as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) volunteer for abused children in her community, and lives a minimalist’s life in a 200-square-foot cottage in San Luis Obispo, California. Connect with Diane: Facebook.com/dianevonglisparnell Instagram: @dianevonglisparnell – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 14 Mar 2024 | 82. Loving and Writing About an Imperfect, Magnificent Child featuring Cathy Shields | 00:28:07 | |
Cathy Shields joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the role guilt and grief have played in her experience parenting a unique child, how she has navigated her daughter’s diagnosis of severe cognitive disability, writing about complicated mothers and complicated mothering, protecting children in our work, critical mothers, living in the contradiction, and her memoir The Shape of Normal.
Also in this episode: -not giving up -social anxiety -forgiving ourselves
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan DIdion Educated by Tara Westover The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls Raising a Rare Girl by Heather Lanier To Siri with Love by Judith Newman
Catherine (Cathy) Shields, M.S. Ed., is a retired early childhood teacher. She writes about parenting, disabilities, and self-discovery. In her debut memoir, The Shape of Normal, Cathy explores the truths and lies parents tell themselves. Her stories and essays have appeared in NBC Today, Newsweek, Bacopa Literary Review, Grown, and Flown, Brevity Blog, Write City Magazine, The Manifest-Station, and elsewhere. Cathy lives in Miami, Florida. In her free time, Cathy likes to hike, kayak, and explore the Everglades National Park with her husband, to whom she’s been married forever.
Connect with Cathy: Website: https://www.cathyshieldswriter.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/cathyshieldswriter LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cathy-shields-88487711b X: https://twitter.com/Catshields1 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cathy.p.shields.3 Substack: https://cathyshieldswriter.substack.com/ Get Cathy’s Book: https://www.vineleavespress.com/the-shape-of-normal-by-catherine-shields.html
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 26 Nov 2024 | 135. Reckoning with What We Need to Write and Learning to Stop Punishing Ourselves featuring Sarah LaBrie | 00:29:50 | |
Sarah LaBrie joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the year her mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the legacy of mental illness in her family, rethinking ambitions in light of tragedy and grief, releasing emotional pressure with writing, when fiction doesn’t cut it, finding company for our mental illness stories, knowing why you want to write a memoir, learning to stop punishing ourselves, being a workaholic, processing our stories through writing, and her new memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart.
Also in this episode: -contemplating our parents’ backstory -reading as much as you can -ketamine therapy
Books mentioned in this episode: Beautiful Days by Zack Williams Heartberries by Terese Marie Mailhot The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway Braiding Sweetgrass and all books by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Sarah LaBrie is from Houston, TX and is the author of the memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart (HarperCollins, October 2024). She is a TV writer, memoirist, and librettist. Sarah was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her fiction also appears in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has held residencies at Yaddo, UCross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MFA from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Schools Fellow. Connect with Sarah: Website: https://www.sarahlabrielivesinlosangeles.com/ Get her book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/no-one-gets-to-fall-apart-sarah-labrie?variant=41476933419042 IG: @itsmesarahlabrie twitter: @sarah_labrie tiktok: sarahlabrie62 – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 16 Jan 2024 | 69. Complicated Family Legacies and Heaps of Material featuring Gretchen Cherington | 00:51:47 | |
Gretchen Cherington joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about complicated family legacies and processing sexual abuse, confronting the public view of a loved one we’re writing about, protecting manuscripts before we have book contracts, corralling information and organizing heaps of material, reading broadly, building relationships and being above board with sources, and her true crime, investigative, family memoir The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy.
-Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir -Take the Let's Talk Memoir survey: https://forms.gle/mctvsv9MGvzDRn8D6
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Also in this episode: -discovering an organizing principle -knowing what material to cut -reading like a memoirist
Books mentioned in this episode: Searching for Mercy Street by Linda Gray Sexton Home Before Dark by Susan Cheever Small Fry by Lisa Jobs Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn Just Kids by Patti Smith Heavy by Kiese Laymon Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel Queen of Snails: A Graphic Memoir by Maureen Burdock
Gretchen Cherington grew up the daughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning and U.S. poet laureate, Richard Eberhart. Her childhood homes were filled with literary greats from Robert Frost to Anne Sexton to James Dickey, a life she captured in her award-winning memoir, Poetic License. But like the paternal grandfather she never knew, Cherington chose a career in business where she coached hundreds of powerful men on how to change their companies and themselves. Her second book, The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy – a true crime, investigative, family memoir – is an exploration of the first twenty years of the meatpacking giant, Hormel Foods, as she pieces together her grandfather’s role—if he had one?—in a national embezzlement scandal that nearly brought the company to its knees in 1921. Cherington served as adjunct faculty in executive programs at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia and on twenty boards of directors including a multibillion-dollar B-corporation bank. Cherington’s essays have appeared widely, in Huffington Post, Covey Club, Lit Hub, The Millions, Yankee, Electric Lit, Hippocampus, Quartz, and others. Her essay “Maine Roustabout” was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. Gretchen splits her time between Portland, Maine, and an eighty-year old cottage on Penobscot Bay.
Connect with Gretchen: Website: www.gretchencherington.com X: https://twitter.com/ge_cherington Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gretchencheringtonauthor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gretchencheringtonauthor/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchen-cherington-612b3b7/ Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-eberhart-father-me-too_n_64068645e4b0c78bb74484e6
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 14 Feb 2023 | 29. Co-Authoring a Memoir featuring Vincent Paterson and Amy Tofte | 00:49:04 | |
Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of artistic partnership, Vincent Paterson and Amy Tofte join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation on their experience collaborating on their new book Icons and Instincts, Vincent’s experience working with Madonna, Robin Williams, and other stars, the 6-step process Amy relied on during the writing process, the fight against artistic erasure, and allowing manuscripts to tell us what they need to be. Also in this episode: -How all of what we do as artists informs our creativity -Why time alone is essential -Separating artists from their behavior Books mentioned in this episode: On Writing by Stephen King
Vincent Paterson is a world-renowned director and choreographer in film, theatre, Broadway, concert tours, opera, television, music videos and commercials. His iconic works include Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal and the famous “lean” as well as Madonna’s Blond Ambition Tour. He directed the opera Manon with Anna Netrebko and Rolando Villazon, Cirque de Soleil’s VIVA! ELVIS and Berlin's first original production of CABARET—the longest running play in Berlin's history. Film choreographies include The Birdcage, Dancer in the Dark, Evita and Hook. He resides in California with his husband, Rene Lamontagne.
Amy Tofte is an award-winning writer and storyteller. She won a prestigious Nicholl Fellowship in Screenwriting from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in 2015. She has been a regular contributor to the award-winning LA STAGE Times and other online publications with more than 100 feature articles profiling Emmy winners, Oscar- and Pulitzer-nominated writers as well as nationally recognized theater artists. Tofte’s critically acclaimed stage plays have been produced throughout the U.S., the U.K., Australia and at the Edinburgh International Fringe Festival. She lives in Los Angeles.
Connect with Vincent: Website: http://www.vincentpaterson.com/www.vincentpaterson.com/HOME.html Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/vincent.paterson.5 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vlpla/
Connect with Amy: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amy-tofte-1712334/ -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 15 Nov 2022 | 16. Voice First featuring Sonya Huber | 00:31:39 | |
Sonya Huber joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about structure and time in memoir, the challenge of getting to the core of who we are and facing ourselves on the page, how her perspective on “voice” has changed over time and why that drove her to write her new book Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto.
Also in this episode: -the power of shame to silence us -how “authentic” voice might not mean what we think -a writing exercise to help jumpstart your work
Books mentioned in this episode: Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf The Mezzanine by Nicholas Baker Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by Jjames Agee Writers: Andrew Monson and Peter Elbow
Sonya Huber is the author of seven books, including the new guide, Voice First: A Writer’s Manifesto, and the award-winning essay collection on chronic pain, Pain Woman Takes Your Keys and Other Essays from a Nervous System. Her other books include Supremely Tiny Acts: A Memoir in a Day, Opa Nobody, Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir, and The Backwards Research Guide for Writers. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, and other outlets. She teaches at Fairfield University and in the Fairfield low-residency MFA program. Connect with Sonya: Twitter: https://twitter.com/sonyahuber Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sonya.huber/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonyahuber/ Website: www.sonyahuber.com Sonya's books: https://bookshop.org/lists/sonya-huber-s-books -- Ronit is a teacher and speaker whose essays, creative nonfiction, and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2023. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 31 Jan 2023 | 27. Protecting What We Create From Our Own Judgment featuring Buick Audra | 00:41:27 | |
Buick Audra joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her new album and companion memoir in essays Conversations with My Other Voice, the importance of protecting our work from judgment, being an abuse survivor, how she views regret, and the tool she used when deciding which details to share about others and which to leave out.
Also in this episode: -why writing about the abuse she suffered does not retraumatize her -how misogyny has impacted her art and career -a closer look at why sharing our voice matters
Books mentioned in this episode: To Throw Away Unopened by Viv Albertine The Part That Burns by Jeannine Ouellette What Do We Need Men For by E. Jean Carroll I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron
Buick Audra is a Grammy-award-winning musician and writer living in Nashville, TN. She is the guitarist and primary songwriter and vocalist in the melodic heavy duo, Friendship Commanders. Her new album, Conversations with My Other Voice, was released on September 23rd, 2022. The album is accompanied by a memoir in essays by the same name.
Connect with Buick: Website: https://www.buickaudra.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/buickaudra/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/buickaudramusic Twitter: https://twitter.com/buickaudra Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs25KbPeA2MD8z3sTUTCMRw Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@buickaudra Listen to Buick: https://buickaudra.bandcamp.com https://open.spotify.com/artist/349pAReW5Ad2bzV5nnGxjO?si=Cl-UJarYRV2lR-2F7AgbAQ https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/62698973-conversations-with-my-other-voice
Buy the album & book together: https://buickaudra.bandcamp.com/album/conversations-with-my-other-voice
Buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/Conversations-My-Other-Voice-Essays/dp/B0BGSNTQTB/ref=sr_1_23 -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 15 Mar 2022 | 2. The Transformation of Trauma featuring Jeannine Ouellette | 00:43:28 | |
Jeannine Ouellette joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the power of literary constraints, why the how can be just as important as the what, writing about childhood sexual abuse, believing in your project when publishing gatekeepers don’t seem to, and why sad stories can make us happy,
Also in this episode: -poetic technique -mother wounds -finding your voice
Memoirs/Books mentioned in this episode: We the Animals by Justin Torres Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas Heavy by Kiese Laymon Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Alison Jeannine Ouellette’s memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best 100 Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award, with starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Her work appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Ms. Aligned: Women Writing About Men; Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives; and Passed On: Daughters Write About Father Loss, Lack, and Legacy. She teaches through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, The University of Minnesota, and Elephant Rock, a writing program she founded in 2012. She is working on her first novel.
Connect with Jeannine: https://www.jeannineouellette.com https://www.instagram.com/msjeannineouellette/ Essay on craft by Jeannine Ouellette in Cleaver:
Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 05 Nov 2024 | 130. Writing Memoir As a Mother-Daughter Team featuring Dorothy and Rachel Leland | 00:40:59 | |
Dorothy and Rachel Leland join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about Rachel’s battle with Lyme disease beginning at 13 years old, controversial medical diagnoses, advocating for treatment, living with chronic illness, keeping a journal, collaborating on a story, writing a memoir as a mother-daughter team and honoring both of those perspectives, taking care of ourselves when working on physically charged material, and their memoir Finding Resilience: A Teen's Journey Through Lyme Disease.
Also in this episode: -Lyme politics -keeping a journal -using photographs to generate material
Books mentioned in this episode: When Your Child Has Lyme Disease by Dorothy Leland Educated by Tara Westover The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank
Rachel became severely disabled by Lyme disease at age 13. It took years, but she's now a strong and healthy adult woman. She lives in Washington state and works in a school as a speech therapy assistant. In addition, she films and edits videos, which she posts on social media to help inspire and educate others about chronic illness. As President of LymeDisease.org, Dorothy advocates nationally for improved diagnosis and medical treatment for Lyme disease. She has co-authored two books about Lyme disease and writes the blog "Touched by Lyme."
Connect with Dorothy and Rachel: Website: https://resilientlyrachel.com/book/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/resilientlyrachel/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dorothy.leland/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2LymeDisease.org/ Get the book: https://amzn.to/3HDqmmA
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 17 Sep 2024 | 119. Leaning into Honesty, the Darkly Funny, and the Jewish featuring Gila Pfeffer | 00:49:13 | |
Gila Pfeffer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about outsmarting genetic destinies and her preventative double mastectomy, remembering what’s at stake in our work, tempering the serious with a satirical lens, honing humor in our work, smart book titles and SEO, advocating for our book cover, considering both the art value and marketing value in our memoirs, fostering a humor-writing community, writing about being Jewish, depicting ourselves honestly, and her new memoir Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences.
Also in this episode: -choosing how much to explain -conveying rituals -writing classes
Books mentioned in this episode: -Genius and Anxiety by Norman Lebrecht -Inheritance by Dani Shapiro -Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner -Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris -Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Best Kalb -My Mess is a Bit of a Life by Georgia Pritchett
Gila Pfeffer is a Jewish American humor writer and personal essayist whose debut memoir, NEARLY DEPARTED: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences, is out now. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Today.com, and elsewhere. Gila’s monthly “Feel It on the First” campaign reminds women to prioritize their breast health. A mother of four grown children, she splits her time between New York City and London. Connect with Gila: Website: gilapfeffer.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gilapfeffer Threads: https://www.threads.net/@gilapfeffer?xmt=AQGzcrgWO3KjUCrvxqH6-VUVEQcOffv4SUmjnKPrnIvRoeI Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gilapfeffer Publisher site: https://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/summer-2024/nearly-departed/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 13 Jan 2025 | 143. Attention, Selectivity, and Deep Curiosity featuring Paula Whyman | 00:43:15 | |
Paula Whyman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about getting out of our comfort zone, her attempt to restore native meadows in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, becoming obsessed with subjects and deep diving, writing about science and nature, controlling and selecting details for impact, being attentive to what readers need, writing tangentially, the need for deadlines, when your editor calls you a meanderer, leaning into exploration and not shutting ourselves down, allowing our writing to reflect the way our minds work, and her new memoir Bad Naturalist.
Also in this episode: -jumping from fiction to nonfiction -talking with experts -reading work aloud
Books mentioned in this episode: The Leaving Season by Kelly McMasters H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald Late Migrations by Margaret Renkl A Buzz in the Meadow by Dave Goulson The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard The Sweet Life in Paris by David Lebovitz The Cost of Living by Deborah Levy Things I Don’t Want to Know by Deborah Levy Real Estate by Deborah Levy
Paula Whyman’s new book, Bad Naturalist: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop, is forthcoming from Timber Press/Hachette Book Group in January 2025. It’s a blend of memoir, natural history, and conservation science, a chronicle of her attempts to restore retired farmland to natural habitat and what she discovered along the way. Her first book, the linked short story collection You May See a Stranger, won praise from The New Yorker and a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and won the Towson Prize for Literature. Her stories have appeared in journals including McSweeney’s Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, and The Southampton Review. Her fiction was selected for the anthology Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review. Her nonfiction has been featured on NPR, and in the Washington Post, The American Scholar, and The Rumpus. She is co-founder and editor in chief of the literary journal Scoundrel Time.
Whyman has taught in writers-in-schools programs through the Pen/Faulkner Foundation in Washington, DC, and the Hudson Review in Harlem and the Bronx, New York. Her fiction is part of the curriculum at The Young Women’s Leadership School in Harlem.
Whyman’s work has been supported by fellowships from MacDowell, Yaddo, The Studios of Key West, and VCCA. She was a Tennessee Williams Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers Conference. She served two terms as Vice President of the MacDowell Fellows Executive Committee.
Whyman is the recipient of grants from the Maryland State Arts Council (MSAC) and the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County. She was awarded an MSAC Creativity Grant and 2023 and 2024 Oak Spring Garden Foundation residencies and grants to support her work on Bad Naturalist. Connect with Paula: Website: paulawhyman.com Instagram: @paulawhymanauthor Bluesky: @paulawhym Mastodon: @paulawhyman@writing.exchange – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 24 Jan 2023 | 26. Memoir in Essays and Experimental Forms featuring Beth Kephart | 00:38:39 | |
Beth Kephart joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the crucial differences between a book of essays and a memoir in essays, choosing what to keep and what to cut, the gifts of nonlinear storytelling, the ethics of telling other people’s stories, allowing ourselves to find beauty in the seemingly ordinary, and her new craft book We Are the Words. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir Also in this episode: -Privacy in memoir -Remaining open and vulnerable as writers -Making meaning with experimental forms
Books mentioned in this episode: Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas The Circus Train by Judith Kitchen An Earlier LIfe by Brenda Miller Headcase: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms by Alexis Orgera
Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a book artist. Her new books are Wife|Daughter|Self: A Memoir in Essays, We are the Words: The Master Memoir Class, and A Room of Your Own: A Story Inspired by Virginia Woolf's Famous Essay (with Julia Breckenreid, illustrator). She can be reached through bethkephartbooks.com, junctureworkshops.com, and her Etsy book shop, https://www.etsy.com/shop/BINDbyBIND
Connect with Beth Kephart: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beth.kephart Twitter: https://twitter.com/BethKephart Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bethkephartnow/ Website: bethkephartbooks.com Juncture Workshops: junctureworkshops.com Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BINDbyBIND Beth Kephart’s next series of workshops can be found here: https://junctureworkshops.com/shop-4/#shop We Are the Words can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/WE-ARE-WORDS-master-memoir/dp/B098K2JSBN/ –- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 03 Oct 2023 | 50. Discovering the Narrative Voice Your Memoir Needs featuring Heather Lanier | 00:42:11 | |
Heather Lanier joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding the psychic distance and narrative voice your memoir needs, writing about our children, defying the tyranny of normal, personal narratives for social change, excavating our own ableism, blogs vs. literary essays, avoiding self-pity, and Raising a Rare Girl, her memoir of parenting a child with a rare syndrome.
Also in this episode: -Revealing the ‘ugly’ side of ourselves on the page -The right we have to tell our stories -How narratives begin with voice
Books mentioned in this episode: Stranger Care by Sarah Sentilles Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Heather Lanier is the author of the poetry collection, Psalms of Unknowing (Monkfish Publishing 2023) as well as the memoir, Raising a Rare Girl (Penguin Press 2020), a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice. Her work has appeared in Salon, The Sun, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, Longreads, McSweeney’s, TIME, and elsewhere. She works as an assistant professor of creative writing at Rowan University, and her TED talk has been viewed three million times and translated into 18 languages.
Connect with Heather: Twitter: twitter.com/heatherklanier Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/heatherklanier/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/heatherkirnlanier Website: https://heatherlanierwriter.com Heather’s new poetry book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/psalms-of-unknowing-poems/19664834?ean=9781958972069 Heather’s Memoir: https://bookshop.org/p/books/raising-a-rare-girl-heather-lanier/13330911?ean=9780525559658 "Rules for Writing about Fiona." https://starinhereye.wordpress.com/2016/08/12/rules-for-writing-about-fiona/ -- Care/of: Get 50% off your first order when you use promo code "Memoir50" – Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 20 Feb 2024 | 76. How to Capture a Feeling: the Specific and Particular featuring Jane Wong | 00:50:34 | |
Jane Wong joins Let’s Talk memoir for a conversation about the challenge of reflection in memoir, writing that teems with the specific and particular, capturing the experience of being a chinese american woman on the page, writing about exes and domestic violence, keeping ourselves safe while creating, constellations in our lives, avoiding sentimentality, and her new memoir which she calls a love song to her mother, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City.
Also in this episode: -how she’s never funny in poems -the super secret Jane Wong’s been keeping -finding your people
Books mentioned in this episode: Seeing Ghosts by Kat Chow Tastes like War by Grace M. Cho Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha The Grave on the Wall by Brandon Shimoda
Jane Wong is the author of the debut memoir, Meet Me Tonight in Atlantic City, out now from Tin House (2023). She is also the author of two books of poetry: How to Not Be Afraid of Everything from Alice James (2021) and Overpour from Action Books (2016).
She holds an M.F.A. in Poetry from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington and is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Western Washington University. Her poems can be found in places such as Best American Nonrequired Reading 2019, Best American Poetry 2015, The New York Times, American Poetry Review, POETRY, The Kenyon Review, New England Review, and others. Her essays have appeared in places such as McSweeney's, Black Warrior Review, Ecotone, The Common, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, and Want: Women Writing About Desire (Catapult).
A Kundiman fellow, she is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize and fellowships and residencies from the U.S. Fulbright Program, Artist Trust, Harvard’s Woodberry Poetry Room, 4Culture, the Fine Arts Work Center, Bread Loaf, Hedgebrook, Willapa Bay, the Jentel Foundation, UCross, Mineral School, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, Loghaven, and others. She grew up in a Chinese American restaurant on the Jersey shore and lives in Seattle.
Connect with Jane: Website: https://janewongwriter.com/ Get Jane’s Book: https://tinhouse.com/book/meet-me-tonight-in-atlantic-city/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paradeofcats
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 07 Nov 2023 | 57. Writing About Mother-Daughter Relationships featuring Adiba Nelson | 00:47:53 | |
Adiba Nelson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about putting humor in our work, the importance of voice, not worrying what people think, writing about mother-daughter relationships, raising teenagers, when you feel like you have nothing left, emotional labor and choosing when to educate others about her daughter’s disability, being a multi-genre writer, MFA programs, and her memoir Ain't That a Mother.
Also in this episode: -Child loss -Imposter syndrome -Finding hope
Books mentioned in this episode: Greenlights by Matthew McConaughey
Adiba Nelson is the author of Ain’t That A Mother; the memoir that Essence, Bustle, Ms. magazine and Shondaland all hailed as a “must read”, and subject of the Emmy winning documentary, The Full Nelson. She is also a disability rights activist, Executive Producer and Creative Consultant on the tv series based on her memoir (currently in development), a freelance journalist, semi-retired burlesque performer and very tired mom! In 2013 she self-published her first children’s book Meet ClaraBelle Blue after not being able to find a book that adequately and appropriately represented her daughter (disabled, Black). Since then Adiba has led numerous workshops and given keynote addresses around the country for parents and educators focusing on DEIA from a disability perspective.
In 2017 Adiba delivered her TEDx talk (Skating Downhill: The Art of Claiming Your Life) to a sold out crowd, and has since joined the NPR affiliate Arizona Public Media as a regular contributor on Arizona Spotlight, and was a featured speaker at the Smithsonian Institute National Museum of African American History and Culture. Her children’s book, “Oshun & Me” (MacMillan/Feiwel & Friends) will be available Winter 2024, and her next book, “Hazel’s Best Day!” will be available Winter 2026.
Connect with Adiba: Website: www.thefullnelson.net Instagram: www.instagram.com/adibanelson Twitter: www.twitter.com/adibanelson Facebook: www.facebook.com/AdibaNelsonWriter Ain't That A Mother: https://www.amazon.com/Aint-That-Mother-Postpartum-Everything/dp/B0BMKG3M9M/ref=zg_bsnr_271583011_sccl_5/135-8794494-4325615?psc=1
– Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 14 Mar 2023 | 33. Finding the Themes in Your Story featuring Debbie Weiss | 00:31:28 | |
Debbie Weiss joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about widowhood and capturing grief and loneliness in ways that keep readers invested, starting scenes in the middle, finding themes in your story, how her blog was a stepping stone to watching her writing take off, and her new memoir Available As Is.
Also in this episode: -writing about the character-you from the narrator-you lens -the online dating scene after 50 -structuring a memoir with lots of material
Books Mentioned in this episode: Consider the Oyster by M. F. K. Fisher The Gastronomical Me by M.F.K. Fisher Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin Shimmering Images: A Handy Little Guide to Writing Memoir by Lisa Dale Norton Educated by Tara Westover
Debbie Weiss is a former attorney who earned her MFA in creative nonfiction from Saint Mary’s College of California in 2020. A native of the Bay Area, she turned to writing after George, her husband and partner of more than three decades, died of cancer in April 2013, and she found herself single and living alone for the first time in her life. Weiss’s essays have been published in The New York Times's “Modern Love” column, HuffPost, Woman’s Day, Good Housekeeping, Elle Décor, and Reader’s Digest, among other publications. She lives in Benicia, CA with het second life partner, Randal.
Connect with Debi: Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/debbieweissauthor/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debbie_weiss_author/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/DWeissWriter Website: https://thehungoverwidow.com/ Purchase “Available As Is”: Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1324017.Debbie_Weiss Amazon: -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 21 May 2024 | 97. A Conversation with Nonfiction Director at Ballantine Books Sara Weiss | 00:44:24 | |
Sara Weiss joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the path to her career in publishing and her role as Nonfiction Director and Ballantine, what memoir writers always need to ask themselves, her interest in memoir with purpose, the blockbuster model and the editorial decision making process, building a writing community, how many books we can realistically sell, making our work ready, and the pace of publishing these days. Also in this episode: -the importance of voice, platform, and hook -selling on proposals and fulls -how all writers need to hustle Book mentioned in this episode: Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett Wild by Cheryl Strayed Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo The In-Between by Hadley Vlahos R.N. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth GIlbert Educated by Tara Westover Sara Weiss (she/her) is the Editorial Director for Nonfiction at Ballantine, where she focuses mostly on nonfiction, while also publishing select fiction titles. She’s been privileged to publish bestselling and critically acclaimed authors such as Linda Holmes, R. Eric Thomas, Emily Nagoski, Stephanie Foo, Hadley Vlahos, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Cody Rigsby, Hannah Gadsby, Annie Hartnett, Lilly Singh, and Lauren Graham. Her upcoming list includes NBC News reporter Yamiche Alcindor’s memoir, Don’t Forget and the novel, Blue Sisters, by Coco Mellors.
More about Ballantine:https://www.randomhousebooks.com/imprint/ballantine-books/
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| 19 Nov 2024 | 134. In Service of Your Story featuring Steve Hoffman | 00:38:17 | |
Steve Hoffman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not getting sidetracked from the story you want to tell, the difference between accuracy and truth, coming to terms with who you are, how screenwriting classes improved his memoir, leaning into weaknesses and what we haven’t done well, writing sensorily about food and wine, learning how to tell a story, beyond beautiful prose, vulnerability and the process of changing, expanding our linguistic palates, immersing the reader vs. drowning them in description, embracing what is weird and singular about your life and sharing that on the page, new ways of seeing the same thing, mid-life self-acceptance, and his memoir A Season for That: Lost and Found in the Other Southern France.
Also in this episode: -accepting our flaws and frailties -keeping forward propulsion in mind -deep reading
Books mentioned in this episode: My Father’s Glory by Marcel Pagnol Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse The Shipping News by Annie Proulx The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds
Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. His writing has won multiple national awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others. He shares one acre on Turtle Lake, in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled puggle, and roughly 80,000 honeybees. Connect with Steve: Website: https://www.sjrhoffman.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sjrhoffman/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sjrhoffmanwriter/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hoffman-6761112/ Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Season-That-Found-Southern-France/dp/0593240286 Press Kit with copy of book: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ziwgi8owbwaoxnvb7wctk/AJS8Fwk5NKHILGum6nnQ4t0?rlkey=xdhrgfmzqd4smh4ct3kxpen2l&st=0nmf301u&dl=0 Photos from our time in France: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ztxem7efsu10eggtxltv7/AAkjbYta2Svt7tSC7C_np24?rlkey=oglczi4nys1qi1ufb86j4szu4&st=srofkk02&dl=0 – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 06 Feb 2024 | 73. Putting Child Loss into Words featuring Eileen Vorbach Collins | 00:34:47 | |
Eileen Vorbach Collins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her young daughter to suicide and the essays she wrote as she contended with her loss, the role of reflection, change, and growth in memoir, calling yourself a writer, finding your people, choosing what stays in essay collections and what goes, and her memoir Love in the Archives.
Also in this episode: -bad writing groups -titling our work -finding homes for our essays in literary magazines
Books mentioned in this episode: Broken in the Best Possible Way by Jenny Lawson Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim by David Sedaris The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
Eileen Vorbach Collins writes true stories she wishes were fiction and fairy tales she wishes were true. Her essays have been widely published and received several prestigious awards. Two have been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Eileen's essay collection, Love in the Archives: A Patchwork of True Stories About Suicide Loss, is forthcoming with Apprentice House Press in October.
Connect with Eileen: Website: https://www.eileenvorbachcollins.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EileenVorbachCollins/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/evorbachcollins/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/evorbachcollins — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 24 Oct 2024 | 127. Re-Archiving Traumatic Memories Through Memoir to Help Forget in Healthy Ways featuring Jay Baron Nicorvo | 00:54:39 | |
Jay Baron Nicorvo joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about his mother’s violent rape and how that event coincided with his sexual abuse at the hands of his babysitter, the pervasiveness of sexual abuse for boys and men, how crucial scenes are in memoir and also how difficult to render, exposition to give the reader and ourselves breaks from difficult material, being a multi-genre writer, on not becoming an art monster, why it’s hard to read the publishing market, leaving an agent, outlasting crushing rejection and so many no’s, exploring and thinking deeply about our obsessions, traumatic memories and the way memoir affects them, how lies work, the experience vs. writing the experience, the impact of desertion on children and his new memoir Best Copy Available.
Also in this episode: -writing in the second person -needing and reaching for support -allowing ourselves to be surprised by our material
Books mentioned in this episode:
The Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman My Dark Places by James Ellroy The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
JAY BARON NICORVO’s true-crime memoir, BEST COPY AVAILABLE, won the AWP Award selected by Geoff Dyer. His novel, THE STANDARD GRAND, landed at #8 on the Indie Next List, and his poetry collection, DEADBEAT, debuted on the Poetry Foundation bestseller list.
Connect with Jay: Website: https://www.nicorvo.net Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jbnicorvo Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jay.baronnicorvo Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/best-copy-available-a-true-crime-memoir-jay-baron-nicorvo/21321293?ean=9780820367361 – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 12 Mar 2024 | 81. Self-Declared Spiritual Gurus, Secret Mantras, and Yoga Cults featuring Joelle Tamraz | 00:37:30 | |
Joelle Tamraz joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about yoga cults and self-declared spiritual gurus, searching for something outside ourselves, mind control, transcendental meditation, capturing the emotional vulnerability of our memoir characters, the many drafts in our manuscripts, and the story of how she pried her way out of the decades-long spiritual emotional, financial, and physical abuse she writes about in her new memoir The Secret Practice: Eighteen Years on the Dark Side of Yoga.
Also in this episode: -critique groups -standing by our story -writing as a relationship with ourselves
Books mentioned in this episode: Writing Hard Stories by Melanie Brooks Love Sick by Sue William SIlveman The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
Joelle is a memoir and life writer who's been putting thoughts to paper ever since she learned about journaling in her eighth-grade English class. Before pivoting to writing full-time, she held senior roles in technology companies for over two decades and owned a yoga studio for ten years. She earned an Honors BA degree in social studies from Harvard and an MBA from INSEAD. She is also a certified life coach and a youth mentor. She has lived in the US and France and now resides in the UK with her husband and two dogs. The Secret Practice: Eighteen Years on the Dark Side of Yoga is her debut memoir.
Connect with Joelle: Website: https://joelletamraz.com X: https://twitter.com/joelletamraz Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/joelletamraz Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/joelletamraz1 Get the book: https://books2read.com/joelletamraz
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 27 Aug 2024 | 114. Thinking Like an Editor, Meaty Bylines, and Mitzvahs featuring Susan Shapiro | 00:36:04 | |
Susan Shapiro joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the smart way to get meaty bylines, how to think like an editor, placing small pieces, getting tough criticism and listening to it, productive writing schedules, taking care of ourselves and setting boundaries, when to bring editors into the mix, putting work away for a while, filling your cup so you can give generously, some publishing case studies, a special speed round, her popular workshops, and her books The Byline Bible and The Book Bible.
Also in this episode: -feelings of competitiveness -being provocative, being timely -doing mitzvahs
Books mentioned in this episode: -The Byline Bible by Susan Shapiro -The Book Bible by Susan Shapiro -Docile by Hyeseung Song -The Chair and the Valley by Banning Lyon -Black American Refugee by Tiffanie Drayton -The Bosnia List by Kenan Trebincevic and Sue Shapiro -The Queen of Gay Street by Esther Mollica -How to Murder Your Life by Cat Marnell
Susan Shapiro is an award winning writing professor and the bestselling author of many books her family hates, like the memoirs Five Men Who Broke My Heart, Lighting Up and The Forgiveness Tour, out in paperback July 23. She's coauthor of Unhooked, The Bosnia List and American Shield. She's freelanced for the New York Times, WSJ, Washington Post, Newsweek, Wired, Elle, The Cut, Oprah and New Yorker magazines online. She lives in Manhattan with her scriptwriter husband and uses her publishing guides "The Byline Bible" and "The Book Bible" for the popular classes she teaches at NYU, The New School, Columbia University and now online. You can follow her on Instagram at @profsue123. Connect with Susan: Website: https://Susanshapiro.net Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/susanshapironet Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/profsue123/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/Susanshapironet LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-shapiro-9171755/
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 05 Dec 2024 | Season Announcement and More! | 00:05:51 | |
Season 5 is coming to an end but season 6 is almost here, along with some more memoir resources and links.
Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com/
Let’s Talk Memoir is a podcast for memoir lovers, readers and writers, featuring interviews with memoirists about their writing process, their challenges, and what they’ve learned about sharing the most personal of narratives. Hosted by writer, editor, and memoirist Ronit Plank, each episode of this limited series highlights different aspects of the memoir writing experience, writing tips, and inspiration. Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches and edits memoir and is working on her next book. Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 21 Jan 2025 | 145. Limitation as an Engine for Creativity featuring Jarod K. Anderson | 00:39:16 | |
Jarod K. Anderson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about changing our definition of what victory is based on what we can and can’t control, understanding our own minds and contextualizing ourselves in the world, his experience with chronic major depression, the stigma around mental illness, the pain of abstraction and the concrete world, his podcast The Cryptonaturalist, privileging enthusiasm over fact, internal landscapes, the paradox of choice, large social media followings, the magic of the natural world around us, limitation as the engine for creativity, and his new memoir Something in the Woods Loves You.
Also in this episode: -fantastical nature -toxic masculinity -a sense of service
More about Ronit’s UW Writing Class, MEMOIR WRITING: FINDING YOUR STORY: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story
Books mentioned in this episode: On Writing by Stephen King Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer Area X by Jeff VanderMeer
JAROD K. ANDERSON is a writer, poet, and creator of The CryptoNaturalist podcast -a scripted show about real adoration for fictional wildlife. HIs new book is: SOMETHING IN THE WOODS LOVES YOU. He has built a large audience of social media followers and podcast listeners with his vibrant appreciations of nature. His previous 3 books are all best-sellers: Field Guide to the Haunted Forest, Love Notes from the Hollow Tree, and Leaf Litter. He lives in Ohio between a forest and a cemetery. Connect with Jarod: https://www.jarodkanderson.com/ https://www.instagram.com/cryptonaturalist/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBXHP2Yy5cJwg0tR9VfP8Xw https://www.facebook.com/JarodKAnderson/
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 21 Nov 2023 | 59. Marketing Your Memoir, Preparing for Book Launch, & Going Viral featuring Laura Carney | 00:54:59 | |
Laura Carney joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pluck, endurance, and being the biggest advocate for your book, writing about unresolved grief, what to do to reclaim memory, the truth about marketing your memoir including pitching early, befriending reporters, and building community, how to engage on social media, preparing for your book launch, and her new memoir My Father’s List. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir
Also in this episode: -transforming trauma -making a person’s death part of our story -letting go of the book
Books mentioned in this episode: The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Turning Pro by Steven Pressfield Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum Wild by Cheryl Strayed Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehesi Coates Running Home by Katie Arnold
Laura Carney is a writer and copy editor in New York. She's been published by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Hill, Runner's World, People magazine, Guideposts, Good Housekeeping, The Fix, Upworthy, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper and other places, and her book My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free is being published by Post Hill Press in June 2023. Her work as a copy editor has been primarily in magazines, for 20 years, including Good Housekeeping, People, Guideposts, Vanity Fair, and GQ. My Father's List is Laura's story about completing the 54-item bucket list of her late father, who was killed in a car crash when she was 25, in six years. Connect with Laura: Website: bylauracarney.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myfatherslist Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myfatherslist Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lac30 – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 22 Nov 2022 | 17. The Role of the Reflective Narrator featuring Lily Dunn | 00:33:07 | |
Lily Dunn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the impact her father leaving to follow the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had on her childhood, when she knew it was time to write her memoir Sins of the Father, stepping into her role as reflective narrator, creating tension, family members in our work, and understanding as a means to healing.
Also in this episode: -writing to find answers -our early experiences as shadows in our lives -staying true to your purpose
Books mentioned in this episode: Educated by Tara Westover Whip Smart by Meliss Febos Your Voice in My Head by Emma Forrest Busy Being Free by Emma Forrst
Lily Dunn writes fiction and nonfiction. Her literary memoir, Sins of My Father: A Daughter, A Cult, A Wild Unravelling is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (March 2022), and her novel, Shadowing the Sun, by Portobello Books (2007). She has personal essays in Granta, Litro, Hinterland, MIRonline and The Real Story, and is a regular writer for Aeon magazine. She is co-editor of A Wild and Precious Life: Recovery Anthology, with Zoe Gilbert (Unbound 2021). She teaches creative writing at Bath Spa University in the UK and co-runs London Lit Lab.
Connect with Lily: Twitter: https://twitter.com/lilydunnwriter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lilydunnwriting/ Website: lilydunn.co.uk London Lit Lab: londonlitlab.co.uk UK Book Link: https://smarturl.it/SinsOfMyFatherHB US Book Link: https://geni.us/SinsOfMyFatherUS -- Ronit is a teacher and speaker whose essays, creative nonfiction, and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2023. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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| 10 Dec 2024 | 138. Pivoting from the Scholarly to the Very Personal featuring Anne Cheng | 00:37:16 | |
Anne Cheng joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pivoting from writing scholarly works on race and gender to writing in first person and quite personally, teaching herself how to say the things that had remained unspoken in her life, her cancer diagnosis and treatment, the rise in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, the ways Chinese femininity dovetails with Southern femininity, what we don't know about those closest to us, sharing work about our partner with our partner, the cumulative effect of an essay collection, allowing our voice to come through in our writing, and her new book Ordinary Disasters: How I stopped Being a Model Minority.
Also in this episode: -feeling braver in writing than in person -thorny mother-daughter relationships -father loss
Books mentioned in this episode: Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino Stay True by Hua Hsu Docile by Hyeseung Song
Anne Anlin Cheng was born in Taiwan, grew up in the American South, and is author of three books on American racial politics and aesthetics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She is professor of English and former director of American Studies at Princeton University and lives in Princeton. She is currently Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Connect with Anne: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anneanlincheng Facebook: Anne A. Cheng Website: https://english.princeton.edu/people/anne-cheng
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 22 Oct 2024 | 126. Writing with a Sense of Exploration and Curiosity featuring Lilly Dancyger | 00:43:35 | |
Lilly Dancyger joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the challenges of existing in the world as a woman, approaching the writing process with a sense of exploration and curiosity, discovering what's really essential and what can we let go of, the nitty-gritty of writing an essay, getting clarity on our material, finding the container to write about what we need to write, articulating the connections we’re making, girlhood, going off the rails as a teenager, how grief and art can be inextricably linked, the tug to write about close relationships with women, living in community and caring for each other, and her book First Love: A Collection of Essays on Friendship.
Also in this episode: -sad girls -tending to friendships -being open to not knowing where the story is going to go
Books mentioned in this episode: In Cold Blood by Truman Capote Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosio The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Anderson Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway Stay True by Hua Hsu Girlhood by Melissa Febos White Magic by Elissa Washuta The Clean Life by CJ Hauser Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones Love is a Burning Thing by Nina St. Pierre
Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship (The Dial Press, 2024), and Negative Space (SFWP, 2021). She lives in New York City, and is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, Off Assignment, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She teaches creative nonfiction in MFA programs at Columbia University and Randolph College. Find her on Instagram at @lillydancyger and Substack at The Word Cave.
Connect with Lilly: Website: https://www.lillydancyger.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lillydancyger/ X: https://twitter.com/lillydancyger Substack: https://lillydancyger.substack.com/ Get her book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714347/first-love-by-lilly-dancyger/ Learn more about her classes: https://www.lillydancyger.com/classes
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 05 Dec 2024 | 137. The Burden of Family Secrets featuring David Tereshchuk | 00:35:21 | |
David Tereshchuk joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being drawn to journalism to help him cure the matter of unanswered questions in his own life, his early years living in the rural borderlands of Scotland, how he turned to alcohol at a very early age, going from from tea and copy boy to anchorman of a nightly news program, becoming sober in his forties, his pursuit of ironclad truth, the place uncertainty holds in our lives, and his resolution to be open-hearted and honest about his life when writing his new memoir A Question of Paternity. Also in this episode: -the place uncertainty holds in our lives -his work in media -the paradox in his life and work
Books: The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
DAVID TERESHCHUK is a journalist working mainly in broadcast media but also for magazines and newspapers (New York Times, The Guardian, New Statesman). He spent two decades with British commercial television, reporting, producing, and making documentaries, before moving to the US, where he worked for ABC, CBS, CNN, Discovery, A&E and The History Channel. His earliest work included coverage of the guerrilla war in Northern Ireland, and then extended into international issues, especially in the Third World. Since 2012 he has been a producer and correspondent for PBS, concentrating on ethical issues. He broadcasts a weekly public radio dispatch of media criticism, The Media Beat, and writes an online column by the same name. A graduate of Oxford University, he has been a US citizen since 2002 and lives in New York City and Ireland. His memoir, A Question of Paternity: My Life as an Unaffiliated Reporter, was published by Envelope Books on September 19th.
Connect with David: Website: https://www.themediabeat.us/david-tereshchuk/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidtereshchuk Facebook: facebook.com/david.tereshchuk Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Question-Paternity-Life-Unaffiliated-Reporter/dp/1915023157
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches and edits memoir and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 16 May 2023 | 43. Trusting Our Writing Selves featuring Gayle Brandeis | 00:40:20 | |
Gayle Brandeis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her mother to suicide and finding a way to write about it, her work across genres, leaning into what makes us unique on the page, trusting ourselves to discover what our work wants to become, why there is no better time to write than now, editing for connection with readers, the importance of play in our work, and her new collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss.
Also in this episode: -speculative nonfiction -organizing principles in essays -choosing the right container for our work
Books mentioned in this episode: Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses A Constellation of Ghosts by Laraine Herring We Were Witches by Ariel Gore Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham
Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss (Overcup Press). Earlier books include the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis (Beacon Press), the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns (Black Lawrence Press), shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award, the poetry collection The Selfless Bliss of the Body (Finishing Line Press), the craft book Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne) and the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won the PEN/Bellwether Prize, Self Storage (Ballantine), Delta Girls (Ballantine), and My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt BYR), chosen as a state-wide read in Wisconsin. Gayle's essays, poetry, and short fiction have been published in places such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, O (The Oprah Magazine), The Rumpus, Salon, and more, and have received numerous honors, including the Columbia Journal Nonfiction Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2016, 2019, and 2020, the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award and the 2018 Multi Genre Maverick Writer Award. She was named A Writer Who Makes a Difference by The Writer Magazine, and served as Inlandia Literary Laureate from 2012-2014, with a focus on bringing writing workshops to underserved communities. She teaches in the MFA programs at Antioch University and University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.
Connect with Gayle: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaylebrandeis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gaylebrandeis/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gayle.brandeis Website: www.gaylebrandeis.com
-- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 19 Sep 2024 | 120. What Remains Unsolved In Us featuring Jaclyn Moyer | 00:41:40 | |
Jaclyn Moyer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about excavating what remains unsolved within us, clueing the reader in early in our pages, how each draft leads to a door to the next, leaning into uncomfortable feelings, trusting the writing process, understanding more about her Punjabi heritage, her fraught relationship with her grandparents, Sonora wheat and the organic farming movement, addressing the wreckage of our food system, the intimacy of the natural world, and her new memoir On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family from Punjab to California.
Also in this episode: -what set’s us off on our journey -integrating different parts of ourselves in our pages -braiding narratives
Books mentioned in this episode: The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs On Immunity by Eula Biss On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong I’m a Stranger Here Myself by Debra Gwartney
Jaclyn Moyer is the author of On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family from Punjab to California. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The Atlantic, High Country News, Salon, Guernica, Orion, Ninth Letter and other publications. She's received fellowships and support from Fishtrap, Wildbranch Writing Workshop, The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, Community of Writers, and Spring Creek Project, and was a finalist for the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize. She has worked as a vegetable farmer, bread baker, teacher, and native seed collector. Originally from northern California’s Sierra Foothills, she currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon with her partner and two young children. Website: www.jaclynmoyer.com Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Hill-Personal-History-California/dp/0807045306 Grassroots Bookstore: https://grassrootsbookstore.com/item/VdT28uSLKvb371iRsDWG3w — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 05 Sep 2024 | 117. Inviting Readers Into Our Most Intimate Spaces featuring Myra Sack | 00:34:14 | |
Myra Sack joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her very young daughter Havi to Tay-Sachs, a fatal neurodegenerative disease, maternal and parental intuition, compassionate bereavement, how her new memoir is as much a story of extraordinary love as it is immense grief, when writing is cellular, the language of loss, generating work vs. revising it, the balm of rituals, inviting readers into her grief’s most intimate spaces, and her memoir Fifty-Seven Fridays.
Also in this episode: -unconditional love -writing fresh grief -taking care of ourselves
Books mentioned in this episode: Bearing the Unbearable by Joanne Cacciatore To Bless the Space Between Us by John O’Donohue Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Books by Rachel Naomi Remen
Myra Sack graduated with a B.A in government and All-American Honors in 2010 from Dartmouth College, where she captained the women’s varsity soccer team. She earned a post-graduate Lombard Fellowship in Granada, Nicaragua with Soccer Without Borders. Following her lifelong passion for sports and social justice, Myra joined SquashBusters, Inc., in Boston in 2013, serving as their Chief Program and Strategy Officer. Myra has an MBA in Social Impact from Boston University and is trained as a Certified Compassionate Bereavement Care provider by Dr. Joanne Cacciatore. She serves on the Board of the Courageous Parents Network and is the Founder of E-Motion, Inc., a non-profit organization with a mission to ensure community is a right for all grieving people. Her first memoir, Fifty-Seven Fridays, was released in April 2024. A writer, coach, and activist, Myra and her husband Matt, live in Boston, MA with their second daughter, Kaia, and son Ezra. Myra's oldest daughter, Havi, passed away on January 20, 2021 of Tay-Sachs disease. E-Motion, Inc.: www.emotion-mc.org Get Myra’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Fifty-seven-Fridays-Losing-Daughter-Finding-ebook/dp/B0CRD4W7NV LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/myra-sack/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myrasack Twitter: https://x.com/myrasack — Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 21 Mar 2023 | 34. Excavating Cultural Identity in Memoir featuring Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson | 00:37:26 | |
Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in Saudi Arabia under an oppressive regime, what being a woman of color does and doesn’t mean to her, invisible identities, writing about ethnicity, race, and culture, her advocacy work, and how she navigated the socio-political in her memoir The Last Sandstorm.
Also in this episode: -Recognizing our privilege as we write -Knowing what to leave out of our manuscripts -How hyper liberalism has impacted her
Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Becoming by Michelle Obama Home by Julie Andrews
Jasmin is a social & behavioral researcher, writer, speaker, and cultural identity advocate. She draws motivation from her personal story as well as her education to advocate and promote social justice and understanding. Born in the Middle East to an Italian mother and Arabian father, she immigrated to the United States in 1999 and pursued her education in Wyoming and Washington State in writing, equity, diversity, and leadership. Jasmin’s areas of expertise are: DEI (Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion), ethical leadership, cultural diversity and social identity, women’s issues, and oppression. Jasmin is also versed in issues regarding: Arab women, Arab culture, social/cultural oppression, religious oppression, and The Middle East, In her memoir, The Last Sandstorm, Jasmin highlights the colorful and challenging experiences of her upbringing in Saudi Arabia, which led to her harrowing escape in her 20s. Jasmin is also the host of the podcast “I Want You To Meet”, where she engages with artists and activists in inspiring and educational conversations. She also guest lectures and guest speaks at events, colleges, and retreats and works at The Evergreen State College in Washington State.
Connect with Jasmin: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jasmin.faulk.dickerson/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100082512111864&ref=page_internal LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasmin-faulk-dickerson-mpa-00324a117/ Website: https://www.jasminfaulkdickerson.com/ -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 11 Feb 2025 | 149. Writing Someone Else’s Story featuring Kanya D’Almeida | 00:38:59 | |
Kanya D’Almeida joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how her life changed when a manuscript by Russell "Maroon" Shoatz, a former member of the Black Panther Party and soldier in the Black Liberation Army showed up in an envelope on her doorstep in 2011, the decades he spent in the Pennsylvania prison system, how their experiences with political violence and civil war intersected, becoming his biographer and building comradeship across the bars, Sri Lanka’s history of conflict, channeling complicated feelings into dedication for writing a book, violence as the only language America knows how to speak, and her new book I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner.
Ronit’s upcoming memoir course: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story
Also in this episode: -being a diasporic writer -being a multi-genre author -the role of self-criticism
Books mentioned in this episode: On a Move by Mike Africa Jr. Assata: An Autobiography by Assata Shakur
Russell "Maroon" Shoatz was a dedicated community activist, founding member of the Black Unity Council, former member of the Black Panther Party, and soldier in the Black Liberation Army. Kanya D’Almeida won the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize, becoming the first Sri Lankan and only the second Asian writer to hold the honor. She was awarded the Society of Authors’ annual short story award in 2022. Her journalism has appeared in Al Jazeera, TruthOut, and The Margins, and her fiction has appeared in Granta. She holds an MFA from Columbia University, where she studied under Victor LaValle.
Connect with Kanya: https://twitter.com/kanyadalmeida
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 14 May 2024 | 96. Memoir Through A Mythic Lens featuring Maureen Murdock | 00:36:10 | |
Maureen Murdock joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how myths help excavate our stories, memoir as a way to reclaim the past, invisible primary patterns in the psyche, letting ourselves meander and reflect, using process journals to excavate fears about being vulnerable, allowing structure to emerge, a favorite prompt of hers, and her latest book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir
Books mentioned in this episode:
Maureen Murdock, Ph.D. is the author of her new book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir and the author of the best-selling book, The Heroine’s Journey, which explores the rich territory of the feminine psyche and has been translated into twenty languages. Maureen is also author of Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Fathers’ Daughters: Breaking the Ties that Bind; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook. She is the editor of an anthology entitled Monday Morning Memoirs: Women in the Second Half of Life and teaches memoir for the International Women’s Writing Guild and in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s program, Writing Down the Soul. Maureen was Chair and Core Faculty of the M.A. Counseling Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has written pieces for the Huffington Post on criminal justice and volunteers for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) with inmates at Lompoc Federal Prison.
Connect with Maureen: Website: www.maureenmurdock.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdockmaureen Facebook: www.facebook.com/maureen.murdock/author Get Maureen’s Book: https://www.shambhala.com/mythmaking.html
— Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 10 Oct 2023 | 52. Approaching Traumatic Material with Complexity and Compassion featuring Brittany Means | 00:31:19 | |
Brittany Means joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up vagrant, writing about child sexual abuse, how she started with the scenes that haunted her, depicting traumatic material with complexity and compassion, leaning into her narrative voice, when she felt like a writer with a capital “W”, and her new memoir Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways. Also in this episode: -reconnecting with your body when writing traumatic material -asking yourself really hard questions -why our stories matter Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Darkroom by Jill Christman Heavy by Kiese Laymon In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
Brittany Means is a Chicana writer and editor living in Albuquerque, NM. A graduate of Iowa's MFA Nonfiction Writing Program, Means has worked with Inara Verzemnieks and Kiese Laymon. She has received several awards for her work, including the Magdalena Award, Geneva Fellowship, and Grace Paley Fellowship at Under the Volcano.
Connect with Brittany Means: Website: www.brittanymeans.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/BrittanyMeansIt/ Twitter: http://twitter.com/BrittanyMeansIt/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/BrittanyMeansIt/ Get Brittany’s book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/hell-if-we-don-t-change-our-ways-a-memoir-brittany-means/19712130?ean=9798985282894
– Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 03 Dec 2024 | 136. The Wise Narrator on the Page featuring Rachel Zimmerman | 00:47:41 | |
Rachel Zimmerman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about rebuilding her family’s life after her husband’s death by suicide, the physical toll of grief, feeling like a doomed family, finding joy and pleasure after terrible loss, how her career in journalism informed her writing process, not tying things up in a bow, our children getting veto power about what we include in our books, when family remembers differently, getting the wise narrator present on the page to transform our experience into a story, and her memoir, Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide.
Also in this episode: -how her memoir’s title changed -taking writing classes -feeling like a loss freak
Books mentioned in this episode: The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion Blue Nights by Joan Didion The Long Goodbye by Megan O’Rourke Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
Rachel Zimmerman is the author of Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide. An award-winning journalist, Zimmerman has written about health and medicine for more than two decades. She currently contributes stories on mental health to The Washington Post and previously worked as a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and a health reporter for WBUR, Boston’s public radio station. Her essays and reporting have been published in The New York Times; Vogue; The Cut; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Atlantic; Slate; The Huffington Post; and Brevity, among others.
Zimmerman is co-author of The Healing Power of Storytelling; and The Doula Guide to Birth. She’s been awarded residencies at Millay Arts and the Turkeyland Cove Foundation and currently lives with her family in Cambridge, Mass. Connect with Rachel: Website: https://www.rachelzimmerman.net/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachel.zimmerman13 FB: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.zimmerman.77 X: https://x.com/@zimmerman082
– Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches and edits memoir and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 21 Feb 2023 | 30. The Magic of Dialogue featuring Felicia Thai Heath | 00:30:34 | |
Felicia Thai Heath joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up on the run to help keep her father, a notorious Vietnamese kingpin, safe from capture, the power of dialogue to tell our stories, beginning scenes in the middle, orienting the reader in time and space, and making the decision to share the family history she once tried to hide. Also in this episode: -Crafting interludes to give readers a break -Writing the most emotional scenes first -Depicting fraught relationships Books mentioned in this episode: On Writing by Stephen King The Hate You Give by Angie Thomas Felicia Heath is a triple-board-certified critical care anesthesiologist, blogger, and debut author. She spent a month alone in a studio in the heart of Philadelphia to write the original manuscript of Spirit of a Hummingbird: Memories from a Childhood on the Run, just seventy-two hours after delivering her third child. This left her husband with their two-year-old, one-year-old, and newborn as she drank pinot noir and wrote for days on end. All of it was his idea, which is exactly why she tattooed his name across her shoulder and eloped with him on a South African safari six years ago. Felicia now lives in Pennsylvania with her husband and four children. She practices medicine as she anticipates a shift in the universe with the release of her memoir.
Connect with Felicia: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/felicia.heath.161 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/latinforhappiness_md/ Website: https://www.mixedfeelingsmama.com Find Spirit of a Hummingbird on Amazon here: https://www.amazon.com/Spirit-Hummingbird-Memories-Childhood-Run/dp/1632995700 -- Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/ More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE, a short story collection: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/
Connect with Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo: Canva Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers | |||
| 26 Dec 2023 | 66. Embracing our Writing Seasons featuring Victoria Buitron | 00:38:39 | |
Victoria Buitron joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the power of flash and lyric creative nonfiction, when chronology doesn’t work, accountability partners and writing mentors, the trauma of being a women in the world, knowing our writing will be there for us even when we stop for a while, and her memoir in essays A Body Across Two Hemispheres. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir -Take the Let's Talk Memoir survey: https://forms.gle/mctvsv9MGvzDRn8D6
Also in this episode: -writer work-life balance -considering autofiction and fiction -lit mags like Brevity and The CItron Review
Books mentioned in this episode: Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy My Mother’s Funeral by Adriana Paramo Into Thin Air by John Krakauer Victoria Buitron is an award-winning writer who hails from Ecuador and resides in Connecticut. She received an MFA in Creative Writing from Fairfield University. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, SmokeLong en Español, Southwest Review, The Acentos Review, and other literary magazines. A VONA fellow, her work has been selected for 2022’s Best Small Fictions and Wigleaf’s Top 50. Her debut memoir-in-essays, A Body Across Two Hemispheres, is the 2021 Fairfield Book Prize winner and available wherever books are sold.
Connect with Victoria: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vic_toriawrites/ Website: https://victoriabuitron.com – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://twitter.com/RonitPlank https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers
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