Let’s Talk Memoir

In celebration of the launch of season 8, Jill Christman joins Let’s Talk Memoir to interview Ronit about growing up with no blueprint for making a relationship work, fending for ourselves in childhood, being driven by curiosity, writing about others with generosity and complexity, conveying to readers that we are not the only one, the use of speculation to move toward a deeper truth, the key to memoir structure, how the now-narrator reaches a hand back to help the character we were, finding a deeper empathy and understanding, opposite world, trying to look perfectly 1980s, trusting that our memories are trying to tell us something, and Ronit’s memoir When She Comes Back.

Ronit's upcoming in-person 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:

-Swedish Fish

-The Love Boat

-being prologue girls

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick

Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin

Stop-Time by Frank Conroy

This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolf

To Show and to Tell by Pilllip Lopate

Jill Christman bio and links:

Jill Christman is the author of The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir (released March 2026 from the University of Nebraska Press). Christman’s other books include If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (2023 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner), Darkroom: A Family Exposure (winner of AWP Prize for CNF), and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies and in magazines such as Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, Longreads, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A 2020 NEA Literature Fellow, she teaches at Ball State University and serves as editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things (a weekly online magazine of micro nonfiction). Visit her at jillchristman.com.

Connect with Jill:

https://www.instagram.com/jillchristmanwriter

@jillchristman.bsky.social

jillchristman.com

Order for yourself and all your memoir-loving friends—directly from the University of Nebraska Press or your local independent or by using any of the handy links on my website. Use code 6AS26 for 40% off on any UNP book!

Ronit Plank bio and links: 

Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poets & Writers, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, The Rumpus, Salon, Hippocampus, The New York Times, and elsewhere, earning Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her memoir When She Comes Back was a Book Riot Best True Crime Book and Kirkus Reviews calls it, “An intimate, intuitive, emotionally vivid family account that finds hope in reconciliation". Ronit is also the author of the award-winning short story collection Home is a Made-Up Place, and her work has been anthologized in Selected Memories, Vol. 2: 15 Years of Hippocampus Magazine and Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage. Ronit is the Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, teaches memoir at a host of venues including the University of Washington’s Continuum Program, Antioch University, and 92NY’s Roundtable, and is host of the podcast Let’s Talk Memoir and the Substack Let’s Talk Memoir. Find her on social media @ronitplank

Website: www.ronitplank.com

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

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

When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/

Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about  going through almost a decade of conversion therapy, dismantling the dogma of pseudo science with its added layer of spiritual discipline, feeling desperate to change, yearning for a place to belong, keeping faith without losing soul, holding onto journals with the sense of using them someday, the difficulty of having to revisit traumatic experiences, weaving in dark humor, being a present-day witness to the past and honoring the more innocent, naive version of ourselves, getting sober and writing from a place of peace, making discoveries in the memoir-writing process, the importance of platform for nonfiction authors, being present and active on social media before our memoirs  come out, being a queer person of faith, loving the present day person we’ve become, and his new memoir Conversion Therapy Dropout: A Queer Story of Faith and Belonging.

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:

Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez spent almost a decade in gay conversion therapy—all while working behind the scenes at some of the most influential Evangelical Christian megachurches. After embracing his identity as a gay Christian and stepping away from church work, he co-founded Church Clarity, an organization that helps queer people find affirming faith communities.

His story and work have been featured by BBC Newshour, TIME, NBC, VICE, The Washington Post, Huffington Post, and Religion News Service. Born in the Midwest, he now calls New York City home, where he continues his work as a writer, digital strategist, and advocate for queer people of faith. His first book is Conversion Therapy Dropout: A Queer Story of Faith and Belonging.

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/timothy.s.rodriguez

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@timothy.s.rodriguez

Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@timothy.s.rodriguez

Substack: https://timothysrodriguez.substack.com

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Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Dr. Craig Yorke joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the toll of centuries of bigotry, being consumed by race, growing up with psychological financial desperation, living other people’s lives, rethinking what Black studies are, processing shame, shedding identities assigned to us, the use of memory for liberation, being ruthless in our writing and revision process, the steep climb toward clarifying ourselves, bringing neuroscience to life, inviting people to wake up to how our history has controlled us, delighting in surprise, and his new memoir: STEEP: A Black Neurosurgeon's Journey.

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:

After a neurosurgical residency at the University of California at San Francisco, he and his wife Mary found their way to an unlikely destination. He practiced in Topeka, Kansas, for 25 years, wrestling with his history and the armored identity it had imposed. He and Mary raised two admirable boys, Zack who lives in Brooklyn and Chris who calls Seattle home.

Dr. Yorke brews coffee for two each morning in the colonial home they’ve occupied for 33 years. He’s a credible violinist, having played the Bruch G Minor concerto with the Boston Pops at 17, and hits tennis balls with passion. Steep is his first book.

Connect with Craig:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61570269755209

Purchase book:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/steep-a-black-neurosurgeon-s-journey-craig-yorke/c5808fe0489a778c?ean=9781953583987&next=t&aid=107402&listref=our-authors-books

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After four years of Let’s Talk Memoir, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for being here and share a few exciting updates about what’s ahead for the podcast.

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Monica Macansantos joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about organizing her collection of essays around her father’s very sudden and unexpected passing, not being sure she could write again, when common themes begin to emerge, connecting with loved ones through writing, recognizing and exploring complicated relationships with a home town and home country, feeling othered, the literary scene in the Phillipines, how writing takes a level of privilege, modeling literary citizenship, deepening our narrative journeys and allowing ourselves to go places we didn’t plan, growing up in a colonized land, leaning into the discomfort of writing, giving shape to grief, taking risks, and her new essay collection Returning to My Father’s Kitchen.

Ronit’s in-person Fall 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:

Monica Macansantos is the author of the essay collection, Returning to My Father's Kitchen (Curbstone/Northwestern University Press, 2025), and the story collection, Love and Other Rituals (Grattan Street Press, 2022). She was a 2024-25 Shearing Fellow with the Black Mountain Institute in Las Vegas, and a 2025 Marguerite & Lamar Smith Fellow with the Carson McCullers Center in Columbus, Georgia. Her work has recently appeared in Electric Lit, River Styx, Lit Hub, Bennington Review, and Poor Yorick, among others. Her honors include a James A. Michener Fellowship from the University of Texas at Austin, and residencies from Hedgebrook, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, the Storyknife Writers Retreat, the I-Park Foundation, and Monson Arts. 

Connect with Monica:

Website: https://monicamacansantos.com

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

Bluesky: @missmacansantos.bsky.social

Purchase Book:

Purchase Returning to My Father's Kitchen from Northwestern University Press: https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810148390/returning-to-my-fathers-kitchen/

Or from Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/returning-to-my-father-s-kitchen-essays-monica-macansantos/8c4605e505fd4de8?ean=9780810148390&next=t&next=t

Or from Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Returning-My-Fathers-Kitchen-Essays/dp/0810148390/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

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Jacque Gorelick joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up missing a mother, surviving a fractured family and worrying you’re broken in unfixable ways, how her husband's medical crisis upended her life as a new mother, letting our inner selves be cared for, protecting a space where a mother should be, owning our story, gathering all the pieces for structure, weaving in backstory to strengthen the stakes, including letters and managing time in memoir, telling the truth as we know it,  taking risks, how we’re never finished, and her new memoir Map of a Heart: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Finding the Way Home.

Ronit’s in-person Fall 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: 

Jacque’s essays about family, motherhood, estrangement, education, and health have appeared or are forthcoming in The New York Times, Salon, Los Angeles Review of Books, The Kenyon Review, Pithead Chapel, X-R-A-Y, Healthy Women, The Washington Post, HuffPost and more. 

After spending her fractured childhood in search of home and belonging, Jacque spent her adult life working with children and families. She has a degree in psychology and a graduate degree in education with an emphasis in early childhood development. She has always been fascinated with how family shapes and defines us, and how we ultimately choose to define it for ourselves. 

A California native, Jacque has lived all over the West Coast from Santa Barbara to Alaska. Now firmly rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area, she lives beside a creek under redwood trees with her husband, two boys, and a mélange of rescues. To find out more about Jacque and her work visit her website at jacquegorelick.com.

Connect with Jacque:

Website: https://www.jacquegorelick.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jacque.gorelick/

IG @jacgorelick: https://www.instagram.com/jacgorelick/

Threads @jacgorelick: https://www.threads.com/@jacgorelick

Substack: Heartmatters https://jacquegorelickheartmatters.substack.com/?utm_campaign=profile_chips

Purchase book via Bookshop:

Jill Christman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about contextualizing a memoir in a post-Roe world, what it means to make a choice as mothers, ending a pregnancy, knowing you will write about an experience while it is happening, writing about childhood sexual abuse, returning to a manuscript with your skirt on fire, writing to a point of discovery, putting down our self-defense and  having to be fully, fully vulnerable, getting clear on why we’re showing up to tell this story now, and her new memoir The Heart Folds Early.

Ronit’s in-person Fall 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:

-writing in present tense

-not casting judgment on others

-how an imaginary choice is not a choice

Books mentioned in this episode:

Love Works Like This by Lauren Slater

The Book of Knowledge and Wonder By Steven Harvey

Crossed Over: A Murder, a Memoir by Beverly Lowry

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Maha

A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis

The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander

Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas

An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination by Elizabeth McCracken

Jill Christman’s recent articles on writing:

1. “Writing the Tooth—Or, How to Find Big Ideas in Tiny Things.” Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. https://www.assayjournal.com/jill-christman-writing-the-toothmdashor-how-to-find-big-ideas-in-tiny-things-assay-122.html

2. “Three Takes on a Jump.” https://riverteethjournal.com/river_revisted/river-teeth-classics-three-takes-on-a-jump/

3. “Tacking: A Sailor’s Guide to Writing Against the Wind.” Writer’s Digest,https://www.writersdigest.com/tacking-a-sailors-guide-to-writing-against-the-wind

Jill Christman is the author of The Heart Folds Early: A Memoir (released March 2026 from the University of Nebraska Press). Christman’s other books include If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (2023 Foreword INDIES Silver Winner), Darkroom: A Family Exposure (winner of AWP Prize for CNF), and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. Her essays have appeared in many anthologies and in magazines such as Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Iron Horse Literary Review, Longreads, and O, The Oprah Magazine. A 2020 NEA Literature Fellow, she teaches at Ball State University and serves as editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative and Beautiful Things (a weekly online magazine of micro nonfiction). Visit her at jillchristman.com.

Connect with Jill:

https://www.instagram.com/jillchristmanwriter

@jillchristman.bsky.social

jillchristman.com

Order for yourself and all your memoir-loving friends—directly from the University of Nebraska Press or your local independent or by using any of the handy links on my website. Use code 6AS26 for 40% off on any UNP book!

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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

Mimi Nichter joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being hijacked on a plane when she was twenty years old in the first incident of international terrorism, how we can be socialized into silence about our stories, processing old trauma on the page, building immediacy in our narratives through contained time frames and present tense, what happens when we “other” people, wanting to get the story right, using humor to mitigate difficult material, overcoming fear of excavating long-buried trauma, arriving on structure, believing we will be able to find space for our books in the world, and her new memoir Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience.

Ronit’s in-person Fall 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:

Connect with Mimi:

Website: https://www.miminichter.com/

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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

Rachel Tzvia Back joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about living with depression, losing a sister, when a mother is emotionally and psychologically absent, how myths can be cloaks, listening to our language and what it offers, thinking in image, when stories don’t match, giving our children the space to tell their version of stories about us, incorporating four recurring elements in a hybrid memoir, the architecture of our books, representing children in our work but not speaking for them, creating a womb for our writing process, leaning into poetry, approaching material methodically, how trauma is handed down generation by generation, the vast divides between us, and her new memoir The Dark-Robed Mother.

Ronit’s in-person Fall 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:

-writing residencies

-the Persephone and Demeter myth

-not torturing yourself in the writing process

Books mentioned in this episode:

-The Dead Mother: The Work of Andre Green edited by Gregoria Kohon

-Darkness Visible by William Styron

-The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon 

-Metamorphoses Narrative poem by Ovid

-Letter collections/poetry collections by Emily Dickinson 

Rachel Tzvia Back is a poet, translator, professor of literature, and the author of twelve books. Her poetry and translations have received numerous honors, including winner of the TLS–Risa Domb/ Porjes Prize, shortlisted for the National Translation Award in Poetry (ALTA), and finalist for the PEN Translation Award and National Jewish Book Award in Poetry. Her memoir, The Dark-Robed Mother, is being published by Wesleyan University Press. 

Purchase book:

racheltzviaback.com

https://www.weslpress.org/author/rachel-tzvia-back/

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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

Julie Scolnick joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about falling madly in love with a married Frenchman when she was 20 years old and living in Paris studying music, working our way back from aching first love, searching for answers, cutting everything that doesn’t serve the story, finding a universal truth in your memoir, restructuring a manuscript to include letters at the start of each chapter, the decades-long process of getting a book published, maintaining artistic control, writing about music in memoir, deep romance and intense heartbreak, and her memoir Paris Blue: A Memoir of First Love.

Ronit’s in-person Fall 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:

-searching for an agent

-hybrid publishing

-believing in your story

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith

Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell

Julie Scolnik is a concert flutist and founding artistic director of Mistral Music, a chamber music series that since 1997 has brought her accolades for the high caliber of her artists, her imaginative programming, and the personal rapport she establishes with her audiences. She lives in Boston with her husband, physicist Michael Brower, and their two cats, Daphne and Chloë. They have two adult children, Sophie and Sasha Scolnik-Brower, also musicians. Paris Blue is a story that lingered in her psyche for over forty years, so she is thrilled to finally share it with the world.

Connect with Julie:

Website: www.JulieScolnik.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/julie_scolnik

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

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

Mistral Music: 

https://www.facebook.com/MistralChamberMusic

https://www.youtube.com/c/MistralChamberMusic/videos

Purchase Book via Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Blue-Memoir-First-Love/dp/1646634713

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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