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

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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.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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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