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/

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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