Let’s Talk Memoir

D/Annie Liontas joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about suffering 3 brain injuries in one year and how that changed their relationship to their body and to the world, post-concussive syndrome, how science is delayed around all things female body, gender and selfhood, being a reluctant nonfiction writer and how memoir was the last thing on their mind, understanding the external and internal forces that we have to reckon with to live, the narratives around women and queer people, interrogating our own patterns, knowing when we’re sidestepping a thing, the cascading problem of vulnerability, considering how you protect the people you love in a memoir, what stories need to be told, and doing so on our own terms, the lonely condition of being inside the human body, how memoir has its own timeline, getting to the story beneath the story and their new memoir Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

- redacting text

- knowing when we’re hiding

- finding comfort in the telling

Books mentioned in this episode

- Fit Into Me by Molly Gaudry

- Decade of the Brain by Janine Joseph

- The Long Game: Notes on Writing Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken

- The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

- Bone Black by bell hooks

- Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life by bell hooks

- Mad Eden by Morgan Thomas

- Clam Down by Anelise Chen

Essay: “Against Catharsis: Writing is Not Therapy” by Essay by T Kira Madden https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/litfriends-podcast/id1717357361

D/ANNIE LIONTAS is the trans-genderqueer author of the crip-queer memoir Sex with a Brain Injury: On Concussion and Recovery, which won the ALA’s 2025 Stonewall Award for Nonfiction and was shortlisted for The Athenaeum of Philadelphia's Literary Award. They are a recipient of the 2025 Lambda Literary Córdova prize, and their debut novel, Let Me Explain You, was selected as New York Times Editors Choice. They co-edited the anthology A Manner of Being: Writers on their Mentors, and their work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, BOMB, McSweeney’s, The New Review, Oprah Daily, and elsewhere. An Associate Professor at George Washington University, LIONTAS helped secure a Mellon Foundation grant on Disability Justice to bring storytelling to communities in the criminal justice system. They write the Most Anticipated Queer Books list at Electric Literature and live in Philadelphia with their wife, dog, and Email the rabbit. 

Connect With D/Annie Liontas: 

Purchase Book:

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Rachel Weaver joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the mysterious illness she lived with for nearly two decades, seeing 30-40 doctors and spending 18 years in the medical system, the toll of dwelling in the kingdom of the sick, writing as a process of distillation, writing as refuge, raising tension without wearing the reader out, making narrative threads work together, the fluidity of memoir manuscripts, endings that resonate with beginnings, avoiding vindictiveness after the first draft, pulling readers inside our experience with specificity and particularity, and her new memoir Dizzy.

Also in this episode:

-narrative medicine

-the power dynamics of the medical system

-staying in our physical experience to write

 Books mentioned in this episode:

-How to be Sick Toni Bernhard

Rachel Weaver’s novel Point of Direction was named a Top Ten Book To Pick Up Now by Oprah Magazine and won the Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Rachel’s newest book, Dizzy, an “arresting new memoir” according to Maureen Corrigan on NPR’s Fresh Air, published in February of 2026. Her second novel The Last Run, is forthcoming in June 2026 with Lake Union Publishing. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics at Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She teaches at Wilkes University and Lighthouse Writers Workshop and holds a CPA in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. For more information visit https://rachelweaver.net/

Connect with Rachel:

Website: https://rachelweaver.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61587520026172

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelweaver2222/?hl=en

Dizzy on NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/09/nx-s1-5704301/dizzy-book-review-rachel-weaver

Course: Save Yourself Years of Drafting: https://www.rachelweaver.net/save-yourself-years-of-drafting-course

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Dizzy-Memoir-Connective-Rachel-Weaver/dp/1959000748

Book Purchase https://bookshop.org/p/books/dizzy-a-memoir-rachel-susan-weaver/dd0268049e6165a1

Deborah Shepherd joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the large age gap in her first marriage and having mixed feelings about the love story of her youth, the titillation of secrecy and huge risks she took in her personal life, how women were seen, feeling protective of our younger selves, power imbalances in relationships, complicated mother-daughter dynamics, not being sure she could write this book, asking a lot of questions of herself and on the page, thinking about the reader, and her new memoir An Old Man’s Darling.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

- opting for a prologue

- finding a community of memoirists

- working with a developmental editor

Books mentioned in this episode:

- Writing Hard Stories by Melanie Brooks

- Motherland by Elissa Altman

- Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

Deborah K. Shepherd's memoir about her age-gap first marriage, An Old Man's Darling, has just been published by Heliotrope Books. Her first novel, So Happy Together, came out in 2021, when she was 74. Her essays have appeared in Oldster Magazine; Motherwell ; Herstry; InShort Journal; FauxMoir ; Eat, Darling, Eat, and more. She earned a Master of Social Worker degree in 1992 and spent much of her career focused on the prevention of domestic violence and sexual assault and the provision of services to survivors. The mother of two and grandmother of two, Deborah lives in Maine with one husband and one sweet, jaunty rescue dog. You can find her at deborahshepherdwrites.com

Connect with Deborah:

Website: deborahshepherdwrites.com

Facebook: Deborah K. Shepherd Author

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dkshdw74/?hl=en

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Samina Najmi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up under a military dictatorship in Pakistan, the colonial legacy in South Asia, writing about migration, race, and gender, teaching as a secular Muslim woman in the aftermath of 911, living displaced lives, leaning into bursts of memory, anchoring ourselves in moments, writing an essay collection over 10 years, learning from realistic fiction, lyrical essays grounded in research, allowing our writing to spill over into different categories, embracing an expansive literary community, how home is less a place than a moment in time, willing to be vulnerable on the page, building trust with readers, and her new memoir Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

- entering writing contests

- our expansive literary community

- the different kinds of displacement 

- fragments that come together later

Books mentioned in this episode: 

- Brown Girl, Brownstones by Paule Marshall

- The Names by N. Scott Momaday

- The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston

- You and Yours by Naomi Shihab Nye

Samina Najmi teaches multiethnic US literature at California State University, Fresno. Her memoir-in-essays, Sing Me a Circle: Love, Loss, and a Home in Time, won the Aurora Polaris Award in Creative Nonfiction and was published by Trio House Press in Oct, 2025. It has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and is featured among Poets & Writers’ five nonfiction debuts of the year and Debutiful’s Best Nonfiction Debuts of 2025. The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) includes it among notable 2025 nonfiction debuts and its recommended reading lists for Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month 2025 and Women’s History Month 2026. Daughter of multiple migrations, Samina grew up in Pakistan and England, began her American life in Boston, and has called Fresno home since 2006. 

Connect with Samina:

Website: saminanajmi.com

Instagram: samina.najmi

Facebook: Samina Najmi

https://www.triohousepress.org/samina-najmi

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Jenny Lisk joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her husband to an aggressive brain cancer and becoming a widowed parent, learning how to do a job she never asked for, being a resource for widowed parents, feeling like you're doing grieving wrong, better understanding grieving children, launching a podcast to learn more about widowhood, incorporating a Caring Bridge blog into memoir, utilizing storytelling principles to flesh out a story and transform it into memoir, fear of vulnerability, defining book marketing broadly, assisting writers in self-publishing, memoir as an act of service, and her memoir Future Widow.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

Books mentioned in this episode: 

Jenny Lisk is the founder of the Widowed Parent Institute. She is an award-winning author and widowed mom who is dedicated to helping widowed parents increase their family's well-being. Jenny’s books, Future Widow and Widowed Parents Unite, and her show, The Widowed Parent Podcast, guide the journey of solo parenting after loss.

Connect with Jenny:

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Courtney Kocak joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her Hollywood misadventures, facing coercion and exploitation as a young woman, systemic structures we bump up against, fighting the patriarchy, having compassion for the girl she was, landing on essays as a place to stretch out on the page, not terrorizing the people we write about, making dialogue feel alive, book incubators, engaging with other writers and finding community, writing as a means to create opportunities for ourselves, forgiving our younger selves, writing our own rules, taking power back, and her new memoir Girl Gone Wild.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian who splits time between Austin and Los Angeles. She wrote for Amazon’s Emmy-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know It All. She’s produced a slew of highly-ranked podcasts and currently hosts three of her own with over two million downloads to date: Private Parts Unknown, about love and sexuality around the world, The Bleeders, about book writing and publishing, and Podcast Bestie, a best friend to podcasters trying to grow and monetize their shows (and a popular Substack). As a writer, her bylines include The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, LA Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, HuffPost, and more. Her debut memoir, Girl Gone Wild, with Trio House Press, is out now!

Connect with Courtney:

Website: https://www.courtneykocak.com/

Purchase Book via Bookshop:

Girl Gone Wild on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/85623/9781949487541

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Carol Odell joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being methodically sexually groomed as a girl during her time working at a stable, sexual grooming as a slow desensitization process,  interrupting the patterns created from unprocessed trauma, including her experience as a therapist in her pages, trying to trace our behavior and thread the story in the narrative, taking risks and doing deeper work, the divisions within ourselves, writing self back into scenes we’ve emotionally splintered off from, recognizing ourselves as victims, hybrid publishing through She Writes Press, turning down the volume on critical self-talk, and her new memoir Girl Groomed: A Therapist’s Memoir of Trauma.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

Books mentioned in this episode: 

Connect with Carol:

Instagram: mosaicofthoughts_

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Cinelle Barnes joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her brain aneurism rupture, writing a memoir two years after brain surgery, the healing modality that is writing personal narrative, memoir as a palimpsest, having multiple memoirs, narrating from the perspective of the adult, choosing to be in a place of discovery, alternating timelines, offloading thoughts onto sticky notes, when writing becomes episodic and collage like, gratitude as fertilizer for the brain, holding onto our words and art to keep holding onto who we are, investigating the many selves within the self, and her new memoir A Way Home: A Memoir of Losing Yourself and the Beauty of Returning.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

-micromemoirs

-fostering neuroplasticity

-changing as we explore

Books mentioned in this episode: 

-Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones

-Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

-The Man Who Could Move Clouds by Ingrid Contreras

Cinelle Barnes is the Philippine-born author of Monsoon Mansion: A Memoir, Malaya: Essays on Freedom, and A Way Home: A Memoir of Losing Yourself and the Beauty of Returning. She is also the editor of the New York Times “New and Noteworthy” A Measure of Belonging: Twenty-One Writers of Color on the New American South. Cinelle is a survivor of a brain aneurysm rupture and sits on the Brain Injury Leadership Council of South Carolina, and is the recipient of awards and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Fund, the Authors League Fund, the National Endowment for the Arts, South Arts, and the North American Travel Journalists Association, among others. She has served on the jury panels for several literary awards, including the inaugural Pulitzer Prize for Memoir. Her writing has appeared in Coastal Living, Travel + Leisure, Buzzfeed, Catapult, Electric Literature, and Longreads, among others. Cinelle lives in Charleston, SC, with her husband, daughter, and cat. 

Connect with Cinelle:

Webiste: cinellebarnes.com

Instagram: @cinellebarnesbooks

Purchase Book via Bookshop:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/a-way-home-a-memoir-of-losing-yourself-and-the-beauty-of-returning-cinelle-barnes/1a3f1cce1c657294?ean=9781662510618&next=t

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Amil Niazi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the pressure on children of immigrants, outsiderness, striving to change our circumstances, what happens to women in the workplace after becoming mothers, confronting misogyny and racism, The Hard Part - her series for The Cut, when people are threatened by ambition, avoiding the need to make memoir prescriptive, offering people perspective that is uniquely yours, sticking to our original vision, finding a way to get our books into the worlds, when work, motherhood, and ambition collide, the desire to have more, the journey of a life, and her new memoir Life After Ambition: A “Good Enough” Memoir.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Books mentioned in this episode:

Amil Niazi is a writer and producer. She writes The Cut’s series on parenting, The Hard Part, and covers work and motherhood and how the two intersect. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, and The Washington Post.

Connect with Amil:

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

Ami Niazi’s column on The Cut: https://www.thecut.com/author/amil-niazi/

Life After Ambition: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Life-After-Ambition/Amil-Niazi/9781668056035

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Melisa Febos joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about romantic obsessions, celibacy as a portal to freedom, living her way into a corner and having to fight her way out, leading with scene and story and plot, taking back the sovereignty of her own mind and body, approaching oneself as a protagonist, leaving out what isn’t central to the story, remembering memoir is not a transcription of a time lived, radical feminists, exercising agency and self-reclamation, living an examined life, integrating memories that were indigestible to us in the moment, the project of looking at ourselves honestly, and her most recent book, now in paperback The Dry Season: A Memoir of Pleasure in a Year Without Sex.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode:

Books mentioned in this episode:

Melissa Febos is the national bestselling author of five books, including Abandon Me, Girlhood—which won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, and, most recently, The Dry Season. Her awards and fellowships include those from the Guggenheim Foundation, LAMBDA Literary, the National Endowment for the Arts, The British Library, The Black Mountain Institute, MacDowell, the Bogliasco Foundation, The American Library in Paris, and others. Her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The New Yorker, The Sun, The New York Times Magazine, The Best American Essays, Vogue, The Best American Travel and Food Writing, and New York Review of Books. Febos is a Roy J. Carver Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program. She lives in Iowa City with her wife, the poet Donika Kelly.

Connect with Melissa:

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

https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-dry-season-a-memoir-of-pleasure-in-a-year-without-sex-melissa-febos/f1c8367d8e351d91?ean=9780593685150&next=t