Let’s Talk Memoir

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

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

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

Lisa Cooper Ellison joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about therapy vs. memoir, taking care of our nervous systems while working on charged material, writing about trauma without retraumatizing ourselves, developing a robust self-care practice, how to avoid creating victim narratives in our memoirs, what to do with gaps in our memory, putting more of ourselves on the page, and her new podcast Writing Your Resilience.   Also in this episode: -signs of a trauma response -learning how to be present -neuroplasticity    Book mentioned in this episode: Writing to Heal by James Pennebaker Healing Trauma: Restoring the Wisdom of the Body by Peter A. Levine Trauma and Memory by Peter A. Levine Becoming the Love You Seek by Dr. Nicole Lepera Stash by Laura Cathcart Robbins Acetylene Torch Songs by Sue William Silverman What Happened to You by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey Hunger by Roxanne Gay Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn   Lisa Cooper Ellison is an author, speaker, and trauma-informed writing coach with an Ed.S in Clinical Mental Health Counseling and a background in mindfulness. She regularly presents and teaches courses on the use of mindfulness in writing, writing about trauma, the book proposal, and all things memoir. A regular contributor to the Jane Friedman blog, her essays and short stories have appeared in HuffPost, Hippocampus Literary Magazine, the New Guard Review, Kenyon Review Online, and Brevity, among others.   Connect with Lisa: Website: https://lisacooperellison.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisacooperellison/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisacooperellison/ Threads: https://www.threads.net/@lisacooperellison LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-ellison-b5483840/   — 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

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

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  

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

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, speaker, and memoirist Ronit Plank, each episode of this limited series highlights different aspects of the memoir writing experience, writing tips, and inspiration.   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 BACKabout 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

Amanda McCracken joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about what happens when you’re hopelessly, stubbornly in love with longing, fear of intimacy, the idea of falling in love vs. being in love, person addiction, choices around sex, longing for avoidant men, recognizing the illusion of control, applying to speak at Tedx talks, going to social media to find publishers, becoming an expert on a topic, learning how to trust yourself, self-compassion, becoming more real, and her new book When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love: A True Story of Overcoming Limerence. Also in this episode: -wanting to be seen -being a guest on a national talk show -publishing articles on virginity and celibacy   Books mentioned in this episode: Drinking: A Love Story by Carolyn Knapp Appetites by Carolyn Knapp Unrequited by Lisa A. Phillips Love and Limerence by Dorothy Tennov The Velveteen Rabbit by MArgery Williams   Amanda McCracken is a journalist passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness, travel, and relationships. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Vogue, National Geographic, Elle, NPR, Outside, ESPN, SELF, Runner’s World, and many others. She published her first article about longing in 2013, which led to additional articles featuring personal anecdotes and deep research and interviews with the BBC and Katie Couric. She is now considered a “limerence expert” and intimacy advocate. Her 2023 TED Talk, “How Longing Keeps Us From Healthy Relationships,” highlights how longing can become selfsabotaging and shares how to change our patterns of longing. McCracken is also a part-time university instructor, massage therapist, triathlon coach, and competitive athlete. Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, McCracken put down roots with her husband and daughter in Boulder, Colorado, after a trip around the world aboard the Peace Boat.    Connect with Amanda: Website: www.amandajmccracken.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandajmccracken Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmandaJanaeMcCracken/ Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@thelonginglab Get the book: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amanda-mccracken/when-longing-becomes-your-lover/9781546008538/   – 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

Wendy C. Ortiz joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the English teacher who preyed on her when she was thirteen, writing about the person we are now when writing about our past, placing the reader in the physical and psychological experience of character-you, how important the opening pages are in setting the stakes, feeling fear and shame, taking care of yourself when writing about traumatic events, reminding ourselves who we were before abuse, growing up feeling comfortable keeping secrets, art as means to recovery, when your press goes out of business, when a predator asks you not to write about them but you do, and her new memoir Excavation.   Also in this episode: -interstitial chapters -university presses vs. small presses -taking care of ourselves when writing about trauma   Books mentioned in this episode: -Firebird by Mark Doty -Truth Serum by Bernard Cooper -The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch   Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook: Essays, and Bruja: A Dreamoir, all of which were reissued in Spring 2025 by Northwestern University Press. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine online, The New York Times’ “Modern Love,” Joyland, FENCE, DIAGRAM, and Pleiades, among others. She was awarded a Tin House residency to continue working on her next book. Her current project is Mommy’s El Camino, a weekly online newsletter. Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles.    Connect with Wendy: Website: https://www.wendyortiz.com Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wendyortiz.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wendy.c.ortiz Book purchase via Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/excavation-a-memoir-wendy-c-ortiz/21982167?ean=9780810148604&next=t   – 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

Mallary Tenore Tarpley joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the middle place between acute sickness and full recovery, living with the imprints of a disorder, resisting thinking in black and white, the memoir plus genre, making memoir reportage and research seamless, showing our imperfections on the page, exploring hard truths along with hope, leaning into the most authentic version of our story, calibrating how much to reveal and how much to conceal, not ever arriving at a place of full recovery, holding onto hope for our book project, upholding values of curiosity and authenticity and truthtelling, when the middle place is the story, restorative narratives, and her new memoir SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.   Also in this episode:  -writing a book of service -leaving room for readers -applying for a book-writing grant   Books mentioned in this episode: The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad Illness As Metaphor by Susan Sontag  Lost and Found by Katherine Schultz   Mallary Tenore Tarpley is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches journalism classes in the Moody College of Communication and writing classes at the McCombs School of Business.   Her debut nonfiction book, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, which was published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element explores the under-discussed complexities of eating disorders and recovery from them. The book is equal parts memoir and journalism, and it weaves together Mallary's own narrative with perspectives from clinicians, researchers, and others with lived experience. In 2023, Mallary received a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support the science-related reporting in the book, specifically around the neurobiological and genetic aspects of eating disorders. SLIP received the Association of American Publishers’ 2026 Excellence Award for Biological & Life Sciences. It also won first place in the Clinical Medicine category and was a finalist in the Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher category.   Mallary’s articles and personal essays about eating disorders have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, and Teen Vogue, among other publications. She maintains a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, featuring writing tips and best practices.   Connect with Mallary: Website: mallarytenoretarpley.com Weekly newsletter: mallary.substack.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mallarytenoretarpley/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallary-tenore-tarpley-6719484/ Facebook: https://facebook.com/mallary.tenore Get the book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Slip/Mallary-Tenore-Tarpley/9781668035016   – 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

Karen Palmer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about changing her identity to escape a dangerous ex-husband, being stalked, the consequences of deciding to disappear, coming to grips with the experience of domestic abuse, mistaking grief for maturity, telling a story as truthfully as possible, relinquishing a child, the long-term effect of PTSD, not ever completely knowing ourselves or others, deep truth vs. inconsequential truth, writing about ourself like we are a character, projecting a persona that isn’t real, understanding the end of the story late in the writing, moving around in time without losing the reader, believing in a story and the ability to tell it, and her new memoir She's Under Here: a Love Story, a Horror Story, a Reckoning.   Also in this episode: -keeping the faith -trying a story out as fiction first -coming of age with many obstacles   Books mentioned in this episode: -In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado -Bluets by Maggie Nelson  -Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel    Karen Palmer’s memoir She's Under Here grew out of her award-winning essay The Reader Is the Protagonist, first published in VQR and selected by Leslie Jamison for inclusion in Best American Essays 2017. She has received a Pushcart Prize and grants from the NEA and the Colorado Council on the Arts, and is the author of the novels All Saints and Border Dogs. Other work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Arts & Letters, The Rumpus, and Kalliope. She teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, CO, and lives with her husband in California.    Connect with Karen: Website: www.karenpalmer.com Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/karenpalmer.bsky.social Instagram: instagram.com/karenpalmer1989/ Facebook: facebook.com/palmer.karen She's Under Here can be purchased at:   AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Shes-Under-Here-Karen-Palmer/dp/1643757547?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V14dH3NYK1_JGqY01snjfw.dGdXTKkQ0h0_uH68hQXjNRQ82iK7rF80ygG6EAeafQ8&qid=1759333809&sr=8-1’ BOOKSHOP.ORG: https://bookshop.org/p/books/she-s-under-here-a-memoir-karen-palmer/d5c065268851768c?ean=9781643757544&next=t For a signed copy from Diesel Bookstore: https://dieselbookstore.com/book/9781643757544s Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shes-under-here-karen-palmer/1147279207?ean=9781643757544   – 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

Dorothy Roberts joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her father’s interviews beginning in the 1930s with over 500 back-white couples who crossed the color line in Chicago,  moving to memoir to explore more personal experiences and feelings, growing up in a mixed race family, shifting the lens onto herself, thinking about identity, finding answers via the writing process, staying motivated and organized while working with heaps of material, the mystery in memoir, bringing the reader into the discovery process, the adventure of not knowing, looking for evidence people can love across racial boundaries, and her new book The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race and Family.   Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing:Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story   Also in this episode: -taking breaks -working with source material -the possibility of racial harmony in America   Books mentioned in this episode: -The Color of Water by James McBride -South to America by Imani Perry -The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson -The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom   Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. The author of five books, including Killing the Black Body, a MacArthur Fellow, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.   Connect with Dorothy: Website: https://www.dorothyeroberts.com/ Get the book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mixed-Marriage-Project/Dorothy-Roberts/9781668068380   – 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

Rebecca N. Thompson, MD joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about life-threatening pregnancy losses and  weaving her own story of navigating a challenging path to parenting with the stories of others, her decade-long collaboration with a remarkable group of women, how healing others helps us heal, imperfect love, not feeling heard, advocating for our own care, humanism in medicine, the cumulative impact of small actions, accepting help to get better, transcribing and processing interviews and forming a narrative, processing as we craft, making stories accessible to a wide audience, the moments that change everything when we least expect it, and her new memoir HELD TOGETHER: A SHARED MEMOIR OF MOTHERHOOD, MEDICINE, AND IMPERFECT LOVE.   Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story   Also in this episode: -accepting help to get better -portraying others in a positive light -Getting consent from book contributors   Books mentioned in this episode: How to Tell a Story from The Moth  Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano   Rebecca N. Thompson, MD, is a family medicine and public health physician from Portland, Oregon, who specializes in women’s and children’s health—and the author of HELD TOGETHER: A SHARED MEMOIR OF MOTHERHOOD, MEDICINE, AND IMPERFECT LOVE, published with HarperCollins in Spring 2025. In this innovative book, Dr. Thompson intertwines her personal story of life-threatening pregnancy complications with the stories of twenty-one of her patients, friends, and medical colleagues.   Through profoundly honest first-person narratives created primarily from spoken interviews, Held Together offers a space for connection, bringing comfort and solidarity to anyone touched by challenges in building or sustaining families. At its heart, this collaborative project celebrates the extraordinary moments in the lives of ordinary women, as they navigate the complexities of motherhood, family dynamics, and health and healing across generations.   Connect with Rebecca: www.rebeccanthompson.com – 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

Blair Glaser joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her time on a Catskills ashram during her twenties in the 1990s, yearning and the thrilling and perilous idolization of other human beings, spiritual development, group think, revisiting our experiences with curiosity and excitement, navigating writing about others, pitching agents and digesting their feedback, writing in scene in a sustained way, growing thematically, digging deeper, allowing the unconscious to inform our writing process, being the stewards of our stories, and her new memoir This Incredible Longing:Finding My Self in a Near Cult Experience. Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story   Also in this episode: -composite characters -working with smaller presses -our foundational, formative experiences Books mentioned in this episode: -Permission by Elissa Altman -Seven Drafts by Allison K. Williams -Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg   Blair Glaser, MA, is a writer, speaker, leadership consultant and licensed psychotherapist who helps create collaborative cultures and increase bottom lines across sectors including finance, law, healthcare, entertainment, and nonprofits. She has run a variety of workshops at renowned retreat centers, including Women Writing to Change the World. After working for six years for V’s (formerly Eve Ensler) nonprofit V-Day, a movement to stop violence against women and girls, she developed and facilitated The Vagina Monologues Workshop, a creative approach to sexual empowerment for women, and later worked with actor-activist Jane Fonda on an empowerment workshop for teenage girls.    Glaser earned her B.S. in theater at Northwestern University and received her master’s in Drama Therapy from Vermont College and The Institutes for the Arts in Psychotherapy, where she eventually served as a senior faculty member.  She was a New York-licensed creative arts therapist from 1998 to 2022, when she left therapy to work full-time with leaders and organizations. Glaser was the first ever online actor-advice columnist when her weekly column “Ask Blair” appeared on Playbill On-Line.    More recently, her work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Longreads, Quartz, The Muse, HuffPost, Shondaland and literary publications such as Dorothy Parker's Ashes, Brevity, and the Mantlepiece. Her new memoir is This Incredible Longing:Finding My Self in a Near Cult Experience.   Connect with Blair: Website: www.blairglaser.com LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/blairglaser/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blair.glaser Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/blair_glaser/ Substack: https://thehistack.substack.com/ Books: www.blairglaser.com/books Events: www.blairglaser.com/events   – 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

Bee Wilson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the evolution of our narratives, how each book teaches you how to write it, approaching memoir from many different angles, how there’s no predetermined idea of what a memoir needs to be, writing about divorce and her husband leaving at the end of the first lockdown in the UK, the emotional life of kitchen objects, not being afraid to tell our truth, cooking as salve, obligations to our reader and our lives, growing comfortable with the idea of writing about ourselves, how the particular becomes universal, piecing strands together, creating necessary boundaries, writing closer to the bone, and her new memoir about moving on The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love Loss and Kitchen Objects.  Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story Also in this episode: -cooking as a salve -choosing what we share  -the ethics of memoir writing   Books mentioned in this episode:  -Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner -The Kitchen Congregation: A Daughter’s Story of Wives and Women Friends  by Nora Seaton -Work by Guy de Mauppassant -Work by Anton Checkov   Bee Wilson is a food writer and the author of 8 books on food-related topics. Her latest book, The Heart-Shaped Tin, is an exploration of the emotional stories behind kitchen objects, told partly through memoir. Her previous books include The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen and Consider the Fork. She writes for a wide range of publications in the U.K. and U.S. including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is the co-founder of TastEd, a charity aimed at bringing the joy of vegetables and fruits to children.   Connect with Bee: Website: https://www.beewilson.com/ @kitchenbee on Instagram and Substack Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Shaped-Tin-Love-Kitchen-Objects/dp/132407924X   Get the book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-heart-shaped-tin-bee-wilson/1146855283   – 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

Alex Poppe joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about working in conflict zones, living abroad and negotiating cultural differences, teaching in northern Iraq, youth and female resilience, pursuing something elusive, using fiction techniques for creative nonfiction and essays, not standing on a soapbox in memoir, moving from the personal to the universal, safe domesticity vs. unpredictable intensity, feeling haunted, the tension between wanting to settle down and set roots but feeling desperate to travel, and her love letter to teaching the new memoir-in-essay Breakfast Wine: A Memoir of Chasing an Unconventional Life and Finding a Way Home.   Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story   Also in this episode: -field reporting -theTulsa Remote Program  -starting chapters in scene and dialogue Books mentioned in this episode  -Woman in Berlin by Anonymous -The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from The Border by Francisco Cantú -Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett -The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood -No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal -The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg  -The Natashas:The Horrific Inside Story of Slavery, Rape, and Murder in the Global Sex Trade by Victor Malarek -Notebooks on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen  -Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth by Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain and Andrew Thomson   Having worked in conflict zones such as Iraq, the West Bank, and Ukraine, Alex Poppe writes about fierce and funny women rebuilding their lives in the wake of violence. She is the award-winning author of four works of literary fiction. Breakfast Wine, her memoir-in-essay of her near decade teaching and volunteering in northern Iraq, celebrates women and youth resilience, post-conflict. Most recently, she served as the strategic communications advisor for a democracy and governance initiative at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Alex continues to be awed by place, people, and their stories.    Connect with Alex: Website: www.alexpoppe.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyalexpoppe/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alex_poppe_author/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alex.poppe.16/ Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/breakfast-wine-alex-poppe/22155518?ean=9781627205931 – 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

Louise Southerden joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about building a tiny home in Australia by hand during the Covid pandemic, being a travel writer for much of her career, choosing freedom over security, writing about exes, struggling with how much backstory to put in, narrative arc and the hero’s journey, firming up a timeline, wanting to be fair in depicting loved ones, taking care of and pacing ourselves while we’re writing, creating the life that we want to live inside with words, being led by how the story wants to be told, and her new memoir TINY: A Memoir About Love, Letting Go and a Very Small House. Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story Also in this episode: -using Scrivener -the freelance writing life -what one really needs to be happy   Books mentioned in this episode:  -Tracks by Robyn Davidson -Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davidson -Wifedom by Anna Funder -The Little Red Writing Book by Mark Tredinnick  -Things I Learned From Falling by Claire Nelson   Louise Southerden is an Australian author and award-winning travel writer who has spent more than 25 years travelling all over the world and won the Australian Travel Writer of the Year award a record five times. She’s the author of five non-fiction books including Surf’s Up, the world’s first surfing guide for women; a working holiday guide to Japan, where she once lived for a year and a half; an anthology of her best adventure travel tales; and her latest, TINY: A memoir about love, letting go and a very small house, published by Hardie Grant Explore. Originally from Sydney, Louise now lives and writes in her tiny home by the sea in northern NSW, Australia.   Connect with Louise: Website: https://www.noimpactgirl.com/ More info about TINY on Louise's Substack: https://noimpactgirl.substack.com/p/tiny-a-memoir-about-love-letting-af1 TINY on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Memoir-About-Letting-Small/dp/174117922X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cDx-4ItRYaLsBKW5vu1dfQ.Pozgks-L91kJZfC4hCxsGFIuB_FqZlo7oJW31ra3GYU&qid=1755581587&sr=8-1 Living Big in a Tiny House episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAxKp5fbvQ  Substack: https://noimpactgirl.substack.com/  FB: https://www.facebook.com/noimpactgirl/# Fishpond: https://www.fishpond.com/Books/Tiny-Louise-Southerden/9781741179224   – 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

Anna Rollins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the relationship between evangelical purity culture and diet culture, incorporating research and reporting into personal narrative, the intricate connections between religion, God, and body shame, fearing our own desires, extreme thinking, body dysmorphia, viewing our bodies as suspect, the physical effects of belief systems, writing memoir plus, tying our work to the culture, learning how to pitch and get bylines, the logistics of placing short pieces in large outlets, religion on our own terms, rejecting scripts, and her new memoir Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story   This episode is brought to you by Prose Playground. If you’ve been writing for years but haven’t published, have tons of ideas but can’t get them on the page, if you have a book coming out, or you’re simply curious about writing, join Prose Playground—an active, supportive writing community for writers at every level. Visit www.ProsePlayground.com to sign up free.   Also in this episode: -church hurt -publishing scores of stand alone essays -tuning into the newscycle and calendar to sell our work   Books mentioned in this episode: Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum Writing That Gets Noticed by Estelle Erasmus The Byline Bible by Susan Shapiro The Creative Act by Rick Rubin A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders   Anna Rollins is the author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Her groundbreaking debut memoir examines the rhyming scripts of diet culture and evangelical purity culture, both of which direct women to fear their own bodies and appetites. Her writing has appeared in outlets like The New York Times, Slate, Electric Literature, Salon, Joyland, and more. She’s also written scholarly articles about composition and writing center studies. She’s an award-winning instructor who taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years. She is a 2025 West Virginia Creative Network Literary Arts Fellow. A lifelong Appalachian, she lives with her husband in West Virginia where they’re raising their three small children.   Connect with Anna: Website: http://annajrollins.com Substack: http://annajrollins.substack.com Instagram: http://instagram.com/annajrollins Book: https://amzn.to/3Lu6uHR   – 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

Steve Eichenblatt joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing a father through abandonment, the abuse he endured from his adoptive father, living in a household of trauma, feeling emotionally disconnected, verbal abuse and the wounds that don’t go away, embracing vulnerability and learning how to connect, writing and processing old, longstanding anger, sharing manuscripts with family before publication, the response to our narratives from siblings and parents, fighting for our voice and agency, learning to help ourselves, being accountable, and the 10-year process of writing his new memoir Pretend They Are Dead. Also in this episode: -not giving up -finding your writing space and time -writing without boundaries    Books mentioned in this episode: -Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt -Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger -The Great Santini by Pat Conroy -Stay True by Hua Hsa   Steven Scott Eichenblatt is a graduate of Florida State University and the University of Florida College of Law. A practicing attorney with Page and Eichenblatt, and father of five, he has spent over thirty years advocating for children as a pro bono guardian ad litem and representing families of first responders killed on 9/11. He lives with his wife, Melissa Ross, in Orlando, Florida.   Connect with Steve: Website: www.stevenscotteichenblatt.com   Ronit’s upcoming 10-week online memoir course: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-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