Let’s Talk Memoir

Stephanie Weaver MPH joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about family estrangement, gaslighting, her recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, chronic illness, not wanting a book to be about revenge, reframing a memoir around a larger cultural moment to resonate with more people, stepping away from our memoir projects to take care of ourselves, avoiding traumatizing the reader, knowing when a structure has clicked in place, discovering the complex heart of your story, the querying process, when you don’t have a big platform but have lots of connections, and her new memoir Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family is Broken.

Stephanie Weaver on The Body Myth: Loving Our Bodies When They’ve Been a Source of Pain

https://ronitplank.com/2022/06/14/the-body-myth-loving-our-bodies-when-theyve-been-a-source-of-pain-ft-stephanie-weaver/

Ronit’s 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:

-Beta readers

-removing tags in dialogue

-how our brains record memories

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

-Educated by Tara Westover

-The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis

-When Longing Becomes Your Lover by Amanda J. McCracken

-The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk

-Wild by Cheryl Strayed

-This Boy’s Life by Tobias Wolff

-Homebaked by Alia Volz

-Madman in the Woods by Jamie Gehring

Stephanie Weaver MPH is an experienced curator and storytelling strategist. With a rich career spanning museum storytelling, public health, and speaker coaching, she has worked at a range of iconic institutions – from The San Diego Zoo to The White House. A world traveler who embarked on a solo journey through Southeast Asia at 28, Weaver has curated TEDxSanDiego, coached hundreds of speakers, and authored five books that illuminate the power of personal narrative. A survivor and advocate, she's transformed personal battles with childhood sexual abuse and chronic illness into a mission of helping others heal. 

After living in Cleveland, Connecticut, and Chicago, Stephanie has been a happy Southern Californian for thirty years, where she and her husband wait hand and foot on their golden retriever.

Sign up for her free newsletter Fun to Be Around at stephanieweaver.com

Connect with Stephanie Weaver, MPH on:

Website: https://stephanieweaver.com

Substack https://sweavermph.substack.com/

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

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

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

Purchase book: 

Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family Is Broken (Amazon) https://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Sweet-Yourself-Family-Broken/dp/1960456377/

Bitter, Sweet (Bookshop) https://bookshop.org/p/books/bitter-sweet-how-to-heal-yourself-when-your-family-is-broken-stephanie-weaver/ff5eb4fcdc02b083

Bitter, Sweet (Barnes and Noble) https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/bitter-sweet-stephanie-weaver/1148895292?ean=9781960456373

Professional beta reads & TED-talk speaker coaching https://experienceology.com/writing-coach/

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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

Nikkya Hargrove joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the effects of incarceration on the family system, growing up lost and unsure who her family was, accepting the responsibility of becoming her brother’s mother, the spark that got her writing her memoir, gaining the lens to understand our story is worthy of being told, acknowledging the divisions within ourselves, incorporating backstory without slowing the narrative down, holding space for others in our work, allowing ourselves to use the words we couldn't use growing up, normalizing sharing feelings, the gift of found family, the complicated truths within us, and her memoir MAMA: A Queer Black Woman’s Story of Family Lost and Found.

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:

-starting with the basics

-getting to the truth

-finding freedom in our story

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls

Just Mercy by Brian Stevenson

Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford 

The Prisoner’s Wife by Asha Bandele

Nikkya Hargrove is a graduate of Bard College and currently serves as a member of the school's Alumni/ae Board of Governors. A LAMBDA Literary Nonfiction Fellow, she has written about adoption, marriage, motherhood, and the prison system for The Washington Post, The Guardian, The New York Times, Scary Mommy, Psychology Today, Rumpus, and more. Until recently, she has spent her professional career working for social impact organizations. She is now the proud owner of her very own, independent bookstore called Obodo Serendipity Books. She lives in Connecticut with her wife and three children.

Connect with Nikkya:

Website: https://www.nikkyamhargrove.com/

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

Book purchase via Hachettebookgroup:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/nikkya-hargrove/mama/9781643751580/

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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

Amanda McCracken joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about what happens when you’re hopelessly, stubbornly in love with longing, fear of intimacy, the idea of falling in love vs. being in love, person addiction, choices around sex, longing for avoidant men, recognizing the illusion of control, applying to speak at Tedx talks, going to social media to find publishers, becoming an expert on a topic, learning how to trust yourself, self-compassion, becoming more real, and her new book When Longing Becomes Your Lover: Breaking from Infatuation, Rejection, and Perfectionism to Find Authentic Love: A True Story of Overcoming Limerence.

Also in this episode:

-wanting to be seen

-being a guest on a national talk show

-publishing articles on virginity and celibacy

Books mentioned in this episode:

Drinking: A Love Story by Carolyn Knapp

Appetites by Carolyn Knapp

Unrequited by Lisa A. Phillips

Love and Limerence by Dorothy Tennov

The Velveteen Rabbit by MArgery Williams

Amanda McCracken is a journalist passionate about experiences that highlight the intersection of wellness, travel, and relationships. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, Guardian, Vogue, National Geographic, Elle, NPR, Outside, ESPN, SELF, Runner’s World, and many others. She published her first article about longing in 2013, which led to additional articles featuring personal anecdotes and deep research and interviews with the BBC and Katie Couric. She is now considered a “limerence expert” and intimacy advocate. Her 2023 TED Talk, “How Longing Keeps Us From Healthy Relationships,” highlights how longing can become selfsabotaging and shares how to change our patterns of longing. McCracken is also a part-time university instructor, massage therapist, triathlon coach, and competitive athlete. Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, McCracken put down roots with her husband and daughter in Boulder, Colorado, after a trip around the world aboard the Peace Boat. 

Connect with Amanda:

Website: www.amandajmccracken.com

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

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

Tiktok https://www.tiktok.com/@thelonginglab

Get the book: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/amanda-mccracken/when-longing-becomes-your-lover/9781546008538/

–

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

Wendy C. Ortiz joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the English teacher who preyed on her when she was thirteen, writing about the person we are now when writing about our past, placing the reader in the physical and psychological experience of character-you, how important the opening pages are in setting the stakes, feeling fear and shame, taking care of yourself when writing about traumatic events, reminding ourselves who we were before abuse, growing up feeling comfortable keeping secrets, art as means to recovery, when your press goes out of business, when a predator asks you not to write about them but you do, and her new memoir Excavation.

Also in this episode:

-interstitial chapters

-university presses vs. small presses

-taking care of ourselves when writing about trauma

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Firebird by Mark Doty

-Truth Serum by Bernard Cooper

-The Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch

Wendy C. Ortiz is the author of Excavation: A Memoir, Hollywood Notebook: Essays, and Bruja: A Dreamoir, all of which were reissued in Spring 2025 by Northwestern University Press. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, The Rumpus, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her writing has appeared in BOMB Magazine online, The New York Times’ “Modern Love,” Joyland, FENCE, DIAGRAM, and Pleiades, among others. She was awarded a Tin House residency to continue working on her next book. Her current project is Mommy’s El Camino, a weekly online newsletter. Wendy is a psychotherapist in private practice in Los Angeles. 

Connect with Wendy:

Website: https://www.wendyortiz.com

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/wendyortiz.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wendy.c.ortiz

Book purchase via Bookshop:

https://bookshop.org/p/books/excavation-a-memoir-wendy-c-ortiz/21982167?ean=9780810148604&next=t

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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

Mallary Tenore Tarpley joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the middle place between acute sickness and full recovery, living with the imprints of a disorder, resisting thinking in black and white, the memoir plus genre, making memoir reportage and research seamless, showing our imperfections on the page, exploring hard truths along with hope, leaning into the most authentic version of our story, calibrating how much to reveal and how much to conceal, not ever arriving at a place of full recovery, holding onto hope for our book project, upholding values of curiosity and authenticity and truthtelling, when the middle place is the story, restorative narratives, and her new memoir SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery.

Also in this episode: 

-writing a book of service

-leaving room for readers

-applying for a book-writing grant

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke

Between Two Kingdoms by Suleika Jaouad

Illness As Metaphor by Susan Sontag 

Lost and Found by Katherine Schulz

Mallary Tenore Tarpley is an assistant professor of practice at the University of Texas at Austin, where she teaches journalism classes in the Moody College of Communication and writing classes at the McCombs School of Business.

Her debut nonfiction book, SLIP: Life in the Middle of Eating Disorder Recovery, which was published by Simon & Schuster’s Simon Element explores the under-discussed complexities of eating disorders and recovery from them. The book is equal parts memoir and journalism, and it weaves together Mallary's own narrative with perspectives from clinicians, researchers, and others with lived experience. In 2023, Mallary received a generous grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to support the science-related reporting in the book, specifically around the neurobiological and genetic aspects of eating disorders. SLIP received the Association of American Publishers’ 2026 Excellence Award for Biological & Life Sciences. It also won first place in the Clinical Medicine category and was a finalist in the Outstanding Work by a Trade Publisher category.

Mallary’s articles and personal essays about eating disorders have been published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, TIME Magazine, and Teen Vogue, among other publications. She maintains a weekly newsletter, Write at the Edge, featuring writing tips and best practices.

Connect with Mallary:

Website: mallarytenoretarpley.com

Weekly newsletter: mallary.substack.com

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mallary-tenore-tarpley-6719484/

Facebook: https://facebook.com/mallary.tenore

Get the book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Slip/Mallary-Tenore-Tarpley/9781668035016

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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

Karen Palmer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about changing her identity to escape a dangerous ex-husband, being stalked, the consequences of deciding to disappear, coming to grips with the experience of domestic abuse, mistaking grief for maturity, telling a story as truthfully as possible, relinquishing a child, the long-term effect of PTSD, not ever completely knowing ourselves or others, deep truth vs. inconsequential truth, writing about ourself like we are a character, projecting a persona that isn’t real, understanding the end of the story late in the writing, moving around in time without losing the reader, believing in a story and the ability to tell it, and her new memoir She's Under Here: a Love Story, a Horror Story, a Reckoning.

Also in this episode:

-keeping the faith

-trying a story out as fiction first

-coming of age with many obstacles

Books mentioned in this episode:

-In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

-Bluets by Maggie Nelson 

-Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel 

Karen Palmer’s memoir She's Under Here grew out of her award-winning essay The Reader Is the Protagonist, first published in VQR and selected by Leslie Jamison for inclusion in Best American Essays 2017. She has received a Pushcart Prize and grants from the NEA and the Colorado Council on the Arts, and is the author of the novels All Saints and Border Dogs. Other work has appeared in the Kenyon Review, Arts & Letters, The Rumpus, and Kalliope. She teaches at Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, CO, and lives with her husband in California. 

Connect with Karen:

Website: www.karenpalmer.com

Bluesky: bsky.app/profile/karenpalmer.bsky.social

Instagram: instagram.com/karenpalmer1989/

Facebook: facebook.com/palmer.karen

She's Under Here can be purchased at:

AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Shes-Under-Here-Karen-Palmer/dp/1643757547?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.V14dH3NYK1_JGqY01snjfw.dGdXTKkQ0h0_uH68hQXjNRQ82iK7rF80ygG6EAeafQ8&qid=1759333809&sr=8-1’

BOOKSHOP.ORG: https://bookshop.org/p/books/she-s-under-here-a-memoir-karen-palmer/d5c065268851768c?ean=9781643757544&next=t

For a signed copy from Diesel Bookstore:

https://dieselbookstore.com/book/9781643757544s

Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/shes-under-here-karen-palmer/1147279207?ean=9781643757544

–

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

Dorothy Roberts joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her father’s interviews beginning in the 1930s with over 500 back-white couples who crossed the color line in Chicago,  moving to memoir to explore more personal experiences and feelings, growing up in a mixed race family, shifting the lens onto herself, thinking about identity, finding answers via the writing process, staying motivated and organized while working with heaps of material, the mystery in memoir, bringing the reader into the discovery process, the adventure of not knowing, looking for evidence people can love across racial boundaries, and her new book The Mixed Marriage Project: A Memoir of Love, Race and Family.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing:Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

Also in this episode:

-taking breaks

-working with source material

-the possibility of racial harmony in America

Books mentioned in this episode:

-The Color of Water by James McBride

-South to America by Imani Perry

-The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson

-The Yellow House by Sarah M. Broom

Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law and Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where she directs the Penn Program on Race, Science, and Society. The author of five books, including Killing the Black Body, a MacArthur Fellow, and member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, she lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Connect with Dorothy:

Website: https://www.dorothyeroberts.com/

Get the book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Mixed-Marriage-Project/Dorothy-Roberts/9781668068380

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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

Rebecca N. Thompson, MD joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about life-threatening pregnancy losses and  weaving her own story of navigating a challenging path to parenting with the stories of others, her decade-long collaboration with a remarkable group of women, how healing others helps us heal, imperfect love, not feeling heard, advocating for our own care, humanism in medicine, the cumulative impact of small actions, accepting help to get better, transcribing and processing interviews and forming a narrative, processing as we craft, making stories accessible to a wide audience, the moments that change everything when we least expect it, and her new memoir HELD TOGETHER: A SHARED MEMOIR OF MOTHERHOOD, MEDICINE, AND IMPERFECT LOVE.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

Also in this episode:

-accepting help to get better

-portraying others in a positive light

-Getting consent from book contributors

Books mentioned in this episode:

How to Tell a Story from The Moth 

Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum

If You Want to See a Whale by Julie Fogliano

Rebecca N. Thompson, MD, is a family medicine and public health physician from Portland, Oregon, who specializes in women’s and children’s health—and the author of HELD TOGETHER: A SHARED MEMOIR OF MOTHERHOOD, MEDICINE, AND IMPERFECT LOVE, published with HarperCollins in Spring 2025. In this innovative book, Dr. Thompson intertwines her personal story of life-threatening pregnancy complications with the stories of twenty-one of her patients, friends, and medical colleagues.

Through profoundly honest first-person narratives created primarily from spoken interviews, Held Together offers a space for connection, bringing comfort and solidarity to anyone touched by challenges in building or sustaining families. At its heart, this collaborative project celebrates the extraordinary moments in the lives of ordinary women, as they navigate the complexities of motherhood, family dynamics, and health and healing across generations.

Connect with Rebecca: www.rebeccanthompson.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

Blair Glaser joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her time on a Catskills ashram during her twenties in the 1990s, yearning and the thrilling and perilous idolization of other human beings, spiritual development, group think, revisiting our experiences with curiosity and excitement, navigating writing about others, pitching agents and digesting their feedback, writing in scene in a sustained way, growing thematically, digging deeper, allowing the unconscious to inform our writing process, being the stewards of our stories, and her new memoir This Incredible Longing:Finding My Self in a Near Cult Experience.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

Also in this episode:

-composite characters

-working with smaller presses

-our foundational, formative experiences

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Permission by Elissa Altman

-Seven Drafts by Allison K. Williams

-Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg

Blair Glaser, MA, is a writer, speaker, leadership consultant and licensed psychotherapist who helps create collaborative cultures and increase bottom lines across sectors including finance, law, healthcare, entertainment, and nonprofits. She has run a variety of workshops at renowned retreat centers, including Women Writing to Change the World. After working for six years for V’s (formerly Eve Ensler) nonprofit V-Day, a movement to stop violence against women and girls, she developed and facilitated The Vagina Monologues Workshop, a creative approach to sexual empowerment for women, and later worked with actor-activist Jane Fonda on an empowerment workshop for teenage girls. 

Glaser earned her B.S. in theater at Northwestern University and received her master’s in Drama Therapy from Vermont College and The Institutes for the Arts in Psychotherapy, where she eventually served as a senior faculty member. 

She was a New York-licensed creative arts therapist from 1998 to 2022, when she left therapy to work full-time with leaders and organizations. Glaser was the first ever online actor-advice columnist when her weekly column “Ask Blair” appeared on Playbill On-Line. 

More recently, her work has been published in the Los Angeles Times, Longreads, Quartz, The Muse, HuffPost, Shondaland and literary publications such as Dorothy Parker's Ashes, Brevity, and the Mantlepiece. Her new memoir is This Incredible Longing:Finding My Self in a Near Cult Experience.

Connect with Blair:

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/blair.glaser

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

Substack: https://thehistack.substack.com/

Books: www.blairglaser.com/books

Events: www.blairglaser.com/events

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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

Bee Wilson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the evolution of our narratives, how each book teaches you how to write it, approaching memoir from many different angles, how there’s no predetermined idea of what a memoir needs to be, writing about divorce and her husband leaving at the end of the first lockdown in the UK, the emotional life of kitchen objects, not being afraid to tell our truth, cooking as salve, obligations to our reader and our lives, growing comfortable with the idea of writing about ourselves, how the particular becomes universal, piecing strands together, creating necessary boundaries, writing closer to the bone, and her new memoir about moving on The Heart-Shaped Tin: Love Loss and Kitchen Objects. 

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

Also in this episode:

-cooking as a salve

-choosing what we share 

-the ethics of memoir writing

Books mentioned in this episode: 

-Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

-The Kitchen Congregation: A Daughter’s Story of Wives and Women Friends  by Nora Seaton

-Work by Guy de Mauppassant

-Work by Anton Checkov

Bee Wilson is a food writer and the author of 8 books on food-related topics. Her latest book, The Heart-Shaped Tin, is an exploration of the emotional stories behind kitchen objects, told partly through memoir. Her previous books include The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen and Consider the Fork. She writes for a wide range of publications in the U.K. and U.S. including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. She is the co-founder of TastEd, a charity aimed at bringing the joy of vegetables and fruits to children.

Connect with Bee:

Website: https://www.beewilson.com/

@kitchenbee on Instagram and Substack

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Shaped-Tin-Love-Kitchen-Objects/dp/132407924X

Get the book: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-heart-shaped-tin-bee-wilson/1146855283

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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