Melanie Brooks joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the misinformation and fear around HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, the role of the evangelical church in her family’s history, the emotional toll of keeping secrets, her work in the growing field of narrative medicine, radical listening, revisiting our heritage and beliefs, leaning into courage, vulnerability and risk, and her memoir A Hard Silence.

Also in this episode: 

-self-care

-permission to take our time 

-our integrated selves

Books mentioned in this episode:

Writing Hard Stories by Melanie Brooks 

Melanie Brooks is the author of the memoir A Hard Silence: One daughter remaps family, grief, and faith when HIV/AIDS changes it all (Vine Leaves Press, 2023) and Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017) She teaches creative nonfiction in the M.F.A. program at Bay Path University and in the M.F.A. program at Western Connecticut State University and professional writing at Northeastern University. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast writing program and a Certificate in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. She has had numerous interviews and essays on topics ranging from loss and grief to parenting and aging published in the The Boston Globe, HuffPost, Yankee Magazine, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, Creative Nonfiction, and other notable publications. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children (when they are home from college), and chocolate Lab.

Connect with Melanie:

Website: www.melaniebrooks.com

FB: https://www.facebook.com/melanie.brooks.1690

IG: https://www.instagram.com/melaniejmbrookswriter

X: https://x.com/MelanieJMBrooks

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/melanie-brooks-504826121

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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.

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers