Sari Botton joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about editing the magazines Adventures in Journalism, Memoir Land, and Oldster, her experience publishing on Substack, editing vs. generating material, putting ourselves in our story, wrestling with what to share, creating safe boundaries, growing into the truest version of ourselves, vomit drafts, leaving the perfectionist out of the room, turning death on its head, shedding false identities, being our own best champion, and her mid-life coming of age memoir in episodes And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo.

Also in this episode: 

-lowering standards for an early draft

-finding time for our own writing

-giving ourselves downtime to switch gears

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott

-Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

-Bodywork by Melissa Febos

-The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

-All books by Abigail Thomas

Sari’s audibook is available here: https://www.audible.com/pd/And-You-May-Find-Yourself-Audiobook/B0DVMR3V2M

Sari Botton's memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual "5 Over 50" feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. For five years, she was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving NewYork and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. She was the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department at SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023. 

Connect with Sari:

http://saribotton.com

https://www.facebook.com/sari.botton/

https://www.instagram.com/saribotton/

https://bsky.app/profile/saribotton.bsky.social

http://oldster.substack.com

http://memoirland.substack.com

http://adventuresinjournalism.substack.com

https://www.audible.com/pd/And-You-May-Find-Yourself-Audiobook/B0DVMR3V2M

https://bookshop.org/p/books/and-you-may-find-yourself-sari-botton/18519104

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/sari-botton/goodbye-to-all-that-revised-edition/9781541675681/?lens=seal-press

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Never-Can-Say-Goodbye/Sari-Botton/9781476784403

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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