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

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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