Laura Carney joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pluck, endurance, and being the biggest advocate for your book, writing about unresolved grief, what to do to reclaim memory, the truth about marketing your memoir including pitching early, befriending reporters, and building community, how to engage on social media, preparing for your book launch, and her new memoir My Father’s List. 

-Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir

Also in this episode:

-transforming trauma

-making a person’s death part of our story

-letting go of the book

Books mentioned in this episode:

The War of Art by Steven Pressfield

Turning Pro by  Steven Pressfield

Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum

Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehesi Coates

Running Home by Katie Arnold

Laura Carney is a writer and copy editor in New York. She's been published by the Washington Post, the Associated Press, The Hill, Runner's World, People magazine, Guideposts, Good Housekeeping, The Fix, Upworthy, Maria Shriver’s Sunday Paper and other places, and her book My Father’s List: How Living My Dad’s Dreams Set Me Free is being published by Post Hill Press in June 2023. Her work as a copy editor has been primarily in magazines, for 20 years, including Good Housekeeping, People, Guideposts, Vanity Fair, and GQ.  My Father's List is Laura's story about completing the 54-item bucket list of her late father, who was killed in a car crash when she was 25, in six years.

Connect with Laura:

Website: bylauracarney.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myfatherslist

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myfatherslist

Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/lac30

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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