Let’s Talk Memoir

Sarah LaBrie joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the year her mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the legacy of mental illness in her family, rethinking ambitions in light of tragedy and grief, releasing emotional pressure with writing, when fiction doesn’t cut it, finding company for our mental illness stories, knowing why you want to write a memoir, learning to stop punishing ourselves, being a workaholic, processing our stories through writing, and her new memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart.

Also in this episode:

-contemplating our parents’ backstory

-reading as much as you can

-ketamine therapy

Books mentioned in this episode:

Beautiful Days by Zack Williams

Heartberries by Terese Marie Mailhot

The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson

Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway

Braiding Sweetgrass and all books by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Sarah LaBrie is from Houston, TX and is the author of the memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart (HarperCollins, October 2024). She is a TV writer, memoirist, and librettist. Sarah was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her fiction also appears in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has held residencies at Yaddo, UCross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MFA from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Schools Fellow.

Connect with Sarah:

Website: https://www.sarahlabrielivesinlosangeles.com/

Get her book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/no-one-gets-to-fall-apart-sarah-labrie?variant=41476933419042

IG: @itsmesarahlabrie

twitter: @sarah_labrie

tiktok: sarahlabrie62

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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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

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Follow Ronit:

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https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Steve Hoffman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not getting sidetracked from the story you want to tell, the difference between accuracy and truth, coming to terms with who you are, how screenwriting classes improved his memoir, leaning into weaknesses and what we haven’t done well, writing sensorily about food and wine, learning how to tell a story, beyond beautiful prose, vulnerability and the process of changing, expanding our linguistic palates, immersing the reader vs. drowning them in description, embracing what is weird and singular about your life and sharing that on the page, new ways of seeing the same thing, mid-life self-acceptance, and his memoir A Season for That: Lost and Found in the  Other Southern France.

Also in this episode:

-accepting our flaws and frailties

-keeping forward propulsion in mind

-deep reading

Books mentioned in this episode:

My Father’s Glory by Marcel Pagnol

Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds

Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. His writing has won multiple national awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others. He shares one acre on Turtle Lake, in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled puggle, and roughly 80,000 honeybees.

Connect with Steve:

Website: https://www.sjrhoffman.com/

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

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hoffman-6761112/

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Season-That-Found-Southern-France/dp/0593240286

Press Kit with copy of book: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ziwgi8owbwaoxnvb7wctk/AJS8Fwk5NKHILGum6nnQ4t0?rlkey=xdhrgfmzqd4smh4ct3kxpen2l&st=0nmf301u&dl=0

Photos from our time in France: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ztxem7efsu10eggtxltv7/AAkjbYta2Svt7tSC7C_np24?rlkey=oglczi4nys1qi1ufb86j4szu4&st=srofkk02&dl=0

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Seth Lorinczi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about going from a state of deep hiding to deep sharing, untangling the scars of the Holocaust and world wars through psychedelics, how ancestral trauma can warp relationships with the people we love, when your spouse is a character in your book, writing the truth and the fear of family betrayal, peeling back everything in his life and putting vulnerability into action, and his memoir Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir.

Also in this episode:

-attunement

-putting stories in context

-protecting people who don’t want to be in our memoirs

Books mentioned in this episode:

Scattered Ghosts Nick Farley Barley

Fatherland by Burkhard Bilger

Young Heroes of the Soviet Union by Alex Halberstadt

Seth Lorinczi’s writing appears in The Guardian, DoubleBlind, Narratively, Portland Monthly and other print anthologies and periodicals. "Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir" is his first book. In addition, he was a co-founder of “Judaism & The Psychedelic Renaissance,” a first-of-its-kind live event in Portland.

Connect with Seth:

Website: https://www.sethlorinczi.com/

www.spiralpathcollective.com

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seth.lorinczi/

Link to Ronit’s Writer’s Digest article mentioned in this episode: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-nonfiction/how-to-approach-friends-and-family-about-your-memoir

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Naomi Cohn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about becoming legally blind in mid-life and how that changed her writing process, going from poetry to lyric essay, falling in love with Braille, being sure something is done and also realizing there’s more, reading our work aloud, privacy and what’s ours to tell, the perceptual richness of having altered sight, tapping into our senses, Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, nonlinear logic, writing in small chunks, being curious, trusted readers, and her new book The Braille Encyclopedia.

Also in this episode:

-prose poems 

-tapping into the nonlinear

-ableism

Books mentioned in this episode:

What It Is by Lynda Barry

Pain Woman Takes Your Keys by Sonya Huber

Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

Naomi Cohn, author of the debut memoir THE BRAILLE ENCYCLOPEDIA, is a writer and teaching artist who works with older adults and people living with disabilities. Her past includes a childhood among Chicago academics; art-making: editing Disclosure, a national publication on community organizing; involvement in a guerrilla feminist art collective; and work as an encyclopedia copy editor, community organizer, fundraiser, nonprofit consultant, and therapist. Red Dragonfly Press published her chapbook, Between Nectar & Eternity, in 2013. Her poetry and essays have also appeared in Baltimore Review, Hippocampus, Nimrod, Poetry and, Terrain, among other places. She makes her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Connect with Naomi:

https://naomi-cohn.com/

Order Naomi’s Book: https://rosemetalpress.com/books/the-braille-encyclopedia/

Attend Naomi’s Reading Events: https://rosemetalpress.com/readings-events/

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Anne Pinkerton joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about processing the loss of her older brother David, how brothers and sisters get short shrift when it comes to grief in our culture, her Writing Through Loss workshops, disenfranchised grief, when family members are private people, owning our story, taking breaks, giving ourselves grace, and learning how to take care of ourselves when writing about grief, treating our characters with love and care, when family doesn’t read our memoirs, feeling protective of our own experience, and her memoir Were You Close? A Sister's Quest to Know the Brother She Lost.

Also in this episode:

-bereavement writing group

-how grief messes with our executive function

-providing consolation for other grieving siblings

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Empty Room by Elizabeth Davida Rayburn

Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

Wild by Cheryl Strayed 

Into Thin Air by John Krakauer

History of a Suicide by Jill

Invisible Sisters Jessica Handler

100 Tricks Any Boy Can Do by Kim Stafford

Anne Pinkerton is the author of Were You Close? a sister's quest to know the brother she lost (Vine Leaves Press, 2023). Her essays and poems have appeared in the Boston Globe, Hippocampus Magazine, Modern Loss, “Beautiful Things” at River Teeth Journal, and Sunlight Press, among other publications, as well as the anthologies The Pandemic Midlife Crisis: Gen X Women on the Brink and Nothing Divine Dies: A Poetry Anthology About Nature. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Bay Path University and pays the bills as a marketing communications professional. 

Connect with Anne:

Website: https://annepinkertonwriter.com/

Were You Close? https://annepinkertonwriter.com/the-book/

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

Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/annepinkertonwriter

TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@annepinkertonwriter

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Dorothy and Rachel Leland join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about Rachel’s battle with Lyme disease beginning at 13 years old, controversial medical diagnoses, advocating for treatment, living with chronic illness, keeping a journal, collaborating on a story, writing a memoir as a mother-daughter team and honoring both of those perspectives, taking care of ourselves when working on physically charged material, and their memoir Finding Resilience: A Teen's Journey Through Lyme Disease.

Also in this episode:

-Lyme politics

-keeping a journal

-using photographs to generate material

Books mentioned in this episode:

When Your Child Has Lyme Disease by Dorothy Leland

Educated by Tara Westover

The Diary of Anne Frank by Anne Frank

Rachel became severely disabled by Lyme disease at age 13. It took years, but she's now a strong and healthy adult woman. She lives in Washington state and works in a school as a speech therapy assistant. In addition, she films and edits videos, which she posts on social media to help inspire and educate others about chronic illness.

As President of LymeDisease.org, Dorothy advocates nationally for improved diagnosis and medical treatment for Lyme disease. She has co-authored two books about Lyme disease and writes the blog "Touched by Lyme."

Connect with Dorothy and Rachel:

Website: https://resilientlyrachel.com/book/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dorothy.leland/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/2LymeDisease.org/

Get the book: https://amzn.to/3HDqmmA

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Gina Troisi joins Lets Talk Memoir for a conversation about searching for home and belonging, writing difficult stories and releasing them into the world, feeling too close to our manuscripts and taking breaks, why memoir is sometimes misunderstood, when material feels too difficult, thinking of ourselves as a character, reckoning with self-abandonment and hurting others, writing memoir as fiction first, moving from stand-alone essays to book length work, staying true to our creative vision and her memoir The Angle of Flickering Light.

Also in this episode:

-unpacking honest emotions

-self-destructive cycles

-winning writing awards

Books mentioned in this episode:

-The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

-Wild by Cheryl Strayed 

-The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion

-Lovesick by Sue William Silverman

-Abandon Me by Melissa Febos

-Memoirs by Abigail Thomas

Gina Troisi is the author of the memoir, The Angle of Flickering Light (Vine Leaves Press, 2021), which was a finalist for the 2022 Maine Literary Awards. The Angle of Flickering Light won first place for the 2021 Royal Dragonfly Book Award for Memoir, received a Silver Medal for the 2022 Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), a Silver Medal for the 2021 Reader’s Favorite Book Award, and has placed in several other contests, including but not limited to the 2021 New England Book Festival Award for Non-fiction, the 2021 Paris Book Festival Award for Memoir, and the 2021 Southern California Book Festival Award for Memoir. Gina's novel-in-stories, After the Rush, was the First Place Winner for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished Contest For Literary Fiction, a Semi-Finalist for Ohio State University’s 2023 Non/Fiction Collection Prize, and a Finalist for the 2023 Acacia Prize for Fiction.

Gina received an MFA in creative nonfiction from The University of Maine’s Stonecoast MFA Program in 2009. Her essays and stories have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies, including Fourth Genre, The Gettysburg Review, Fugue, Under the Sun, Flyway: Journal of Writing and Environment, and elsewhere. She teaches writing at Southern New Hampshire University, and is a mentor in the Masters of Fine Arts Creative & Professional Writing Program at Western Connecticut State University. She also offers academic tutoring as well as one-on-one coaching for creative writers.

Connect with Gina:

Website: https://gina-troisi.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gina.troisi.7/

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

X: https://x.com/troisi_gina

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Jennifer Selig joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how our narratives are both unique and universal, archetypical strategies to connect with readers, writing ourselves into meaning, assuaging the fear the world might not need our memoir, following our memories and trusting order will come later, the many different structures a memoir can embody including segmented, blended, and researched, the interplay of memory, imagination, and truth, avoiding gimmicks, the memoirist as archaeologist, and her new book Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepen Your Story and Broaden Its Appeal.

Also in this episode: 

-the vagaries of memory’s tricks and confusions

-the idea of comparative suffering

-our story as dynamic, organic, and authentic 

Books mentioned in this episode:

Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

Eva and Eve by JulieMetz

The Recovering by Leslie Jamison

Untamed by Glennon Doyle

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

Write-Minded Podcast

Jennifer Leigh Selig’s writing and teaching career spans four decades. She’s the author of dozens of newspaper articles, book reviews, essays, journal articles, short stories, screenplays, and books including in this decade "The Writer’s Block Workbook: A Psychologist’s Guide to Working With and Through Writer’s Block," and the Nautilus Gold award-winning book "Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit. "Jennifer earned her PhD in Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and went on to teach there for a dozen years. It was at Pacifica where she first began teaching memoir in a popular 9-month certificate program called “Writing Down the Soul” with her colleague Maureen Murdock. She gathered all the content she created and published it in her latest book, "Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepen Your Story and Broaden Its Appeal." Jennifer lives in the Bay Area in California, and owns a publishing company, Mandorla Books, where she also publishes memoir.

Connect with Jennifer:

Website: www.jenniferleighselig.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.selig.1/

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferleighselig/

Links for courses: https://www.jenniferleighselig.com/deep-dive-courses.html

Link to her book publishing company: www.mandorlabooks.com

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Jay Baron Nicorvo joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about his mother’s violent rape and how that event coincided with his sexual abuse at the hands of his babysitter, the pervasiveness of sexual abuse for boys and men, how crucial scenes are in memoir and also how difficult to render, exposition to give the reader and ourselves breaks from difficult material, being a multi-genre writer, on not becoming an art monster, why it’s hard to read the publishing market, leaving an agent, outlasting crushing rejection and so many no’s, exploring and thinking deeply about our obsessions, traumatic memories and the way memoir affects them, how lies work, the experience vs. writing the experience, the impact of desertion on children and his new memoir Best Copy Available.

Also in this episode:

-writing in the second person

-needing and reaching for support

-allowing ourselves to be surprised by our material

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman

My Dark Places by James Ellroy

The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson

JAY BARON NICORVO’s true-crime memoir, BEST COPY AVAILABLE, won the AWP Award selected by Geoff Dyer. His novel, THE STANDARD GRAND, landed at #8 on the Indie Next List, and his poetry collection, DEADBEAT, debuted on the Poetry Foundation bestseller list.

Connect with Jay:

Website: https://www.nicorvo.net

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jay.baronnicorvo

x: https://x.com/jbnicorvo

Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/best-copy-available-a-true-crime-memoir-jay-baron-nicorvo/21321293?ean=9780820367361

–

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

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Lilly Dancyger joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the challenges of existing in the world as a woman, approaching the writing process with a sense of exploration and curiosity, discovering what's really essential and what can we let go of, the nitty-gritty of writing an essay, getting clarity on our material, finding the container to write about what we need to write, articulating the connections we’re making, girlhood, going off the rails as a teenager, how grief and art can be inextricably linked, the tug to write about close relationships with women, living in community and caring for each other, and her book First Love: A Collection of Essays on Friendship.

Also in this episode:

-sad girls

-tending to friendships

-being open to not knowing where the story is going to go

Books mentioned in this episode:

In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosio

The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule

I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara

The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Anderson

Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway

Stay True by Hua Hsu

Girlhood by Melissa Febos

White Magic by Elissa Washuta

The Clean Life by CJ Hauser

Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones

Love is a Burning Thing by Nina St. Pierre

Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship (The Dial Press, 2024), and Negative Space (SFWP, 2021). She lives in New York City, and is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, Off Assignment, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She teaches creative nonfiction in MFA programs at Columbia University and Randolph College. Find her on Instagram at @lillydancyger and Substack at The Word Cave.

Connect with Lilly:

Website: https://www.lillydancyger.com/

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

X: https://twitter.com/lillydancyger

Substack: https://lillydancyger.substack.com/

Get her book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714347/first-love-by-lilly-dancyger/

Learn more about her classes: https://www.lillydancyger.com/classes

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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