Let’s Talk Memoir

Jason Allen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up working poor on Eastern Long Island with an alcoholic father, the threat of different types of violence, his father’s quickness to anger, trying to get sober, the difficulty of committing to recovery, his brother’s hard drug addiction, rethinking a memoir a million times, finding a narrative focus, the querying process, how writing memoir can feel cathartic, knowing what to cut and what to keep in our manuscripts, balancing our vision of what we know to be true with what other people say about our work, finding hope, and his new memoir Boys Without Fathers.
 
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:
-writing and publishing in different genres
-choosing a small indie press for our work
-incorporating stand-alone pieces into memoir
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
The Glass Castle by Jeanette Walls
The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
 
Jason Allen writes fiction, creative nonfiction, and poetry. For his novel, The East End, Bonnie Jo Campbell provided the cover blurb: “Every page is filled with wise insights about social class and the human heart.” Jason has since been nominated for an Edgar Award and the Georgia Author of the Year Award, and recently completed his memoir, Boys Without Fathers, which will be released September 1st, 2026. His poetry collection, A Meditation on Fire, is now with Black Lawrence Press, and he has published essays with Salon, Literary Hub, and The Strand Magazine. Jason teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Wichita State University and lives in Kansas with his sweet rescue dog, Luna.
 
Website: https://www.jasonallenauthor.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jason.allen.908132/
Instagram: Jason_Allen_Books
 
Preorder link for Boys Without Fathers: 
https://square.link/u/URHWk0x0

Dr. Kara Zivin joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about maternal mental health and her own her mental health crisis during pregnancy and postpartum, how she became a patient and professor in the same health system, navigating shame and guilt around sharing a personal story, taking risks with our professional life, incorporating medical records and journal entries into a memoir narrative, grounding memoir in our own story, supporting women and families, the relief that comes from sharing the hard thing, increasing awareness and helping women to feel less alone, and her new memoir Persevered: A Maternal Mental Health 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
 Also in this episode:- claiming our stories- letting go of an initial structure- maternal mental health and mortality Books mentioned in this episode:- The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso- Tell Me Everything You Don’t Remember by Christine Hyung-Oak Lee- The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham - You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith- The Braille Encyclopedia by Naomi Cohn- Hell Gate Bridge by Barrie Miskin
 
Kara Zivin, PhD, MS, MA, MFA, is a professor of psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, and health management and policy. She aims to increase public awareness about mental health conditions and to influence policy addressing them by combining research expertise (data) and personal narrative (story). 
 
Longer: https://karazivin.com/about/
 
Connect with Dr. Kara Zivin
Website: www.karazivin.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kzivinLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kara-zivin-ann-arbor/Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/kzivin.bsky.socialInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/karazivin/
 
Purchase book:
https://www.ohioswallow.com/9780804012645/persevered/
https://www.amazon.com/Persevered-Maternal-Mental-Health-Memoir/dp/0804012644/
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/persevered-kara-zivin/1148516116
https://bookshop.org/p/books/persevered-a-maternal-mental-health-memoir-kara-zivin/0f1698b9c560969c
https://www.booksamillion.com/p/Persevered/Kara-Zivin/9780804012645
 
–
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

Nicole Walker joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how we talk about current traumas and past traumas in ways that don’t retraumatize us, making our work matter to others, giving ourselves agency over the hard stuff we’re writing about, conveying interiority and emotion, making our experience fundamental to our writing process, exploring our stories through research, asking readers not to look away, disassociation vs distance, metaphors as entry points for readers, experimenting with the speculative, becoming more expansive, and her new book Writing the Hard Stuff.
 
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:
- revising life paths
- encapsulating our experience
- the narrator voice and perspective in our work
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Constellation of Ghosts: A Speculative Memoir with Ravens by Laraine Herring
Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story by Erica Stern
A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form by Brenda Miller
How to Plant a Billion Trees by Nicole Walker
 
NICOLE WALKER is the author of several books including How to Plant a Billion Trees and Writing the Hard Stuff. She has written pieces for The New York Times and is a noted author in several editions of Best American Essays. She edits Crux, the literary nonfiction series at University of Georgia Press and teaches creative writing at Northern Arizona University where she serves as Writer-in-Residence for the Center for Ecosystem Science and Society. 
 
Connect with Nicole:
Website: nikwalk.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nicole.walker.18041 @nikwalk.bsky.social
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nikwalker28/ ‭https://nikwalk.substack.com/ 
 
Purchase Book: 
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/writing-the-hard-stuff-9781350518650/
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/how-to-plant-a-billion-trees-9798216278894/
 
-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.comSubstack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/
 

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: 
https://www.instagram.com/aliontas/
https://www.annieliontas.com/
(currently being updated)
 
Purchase Book:
https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Sex-with-a-Brain-Injury/Annie-Liontas/9781668085561
https://www.theshipmanagency.com/annie-liontas
Lit Friends Podcast https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/litfriends-podcast/id1717357361
-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.comSubstack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/

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
–
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

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
–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.comSubscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankFollow Ronit:https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlankhttps://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social

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
Purchase book:
https://www.triohousepress.org/samina-najmi
–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.comSubscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankFollow Ronit:https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlankhttps://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social

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:- knowing where to end a memoir- instrumental and intuitive grievers- early marketing and building relationships
 
Books mentioned in this episode: - The Anatomy of Story by John Truby- Real American Julie by Lythcott-HaimsThe Chicago Manual of Style from University of Chicago Press
 
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.
Jenny’s work has been featured in The Washington Post, Katie Couric Media, Yahoo Life, ParentMap, and more. She lives in Redmond, Washington, with her two college-age kids.
 
Connect with Jenny:Website: https://jennylisk.comhttps://jennyliskllc.com/https://widowedparentinstitute.com/
 
-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.comSubstack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/

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:- being objectified- deadlines and accountability- small presses as champions for innovative memoir
Books mentioned in this episode:- Draft Number 4 by John Mcphee- Finger Exercises for Poets by Dorianne Laux- Wild  by Cheryl Strayed - Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Stayed- The Wager by David Grann
 
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/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/courtneykocak/Threads: https://www.threads.com/@courtneykocakBluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/courtneykocak.bsky.socialTwitter: https://x.com/courtneykocak
Purchase Book via Bookshop:
Girl Gone Wild on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/85623/9781949487541Teaching: https://www.courtneykocak.com/teaching
-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.comSubstack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/

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:- vulnerability- practicing good self-care- being compassionate with ourselves
 
Books mentioned in this episode: - Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls- Educated by Tara Westover- Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott- Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg
Carol Odell, LICSW, grew up riding horses on the show jumping circuit in Virginia. She has been a practicing psychotherapist facilitating groups and working with couples and individuals since 1984. Married for thirty-eight years and the mother of a grown son, her other passions include: squash, pickleball, partner-dancing, mosaics, writing, traveling and being in community with friends and family. She and her husband currently split their time between Seattle and Cle Elum, Washington.
 
Connect with Carol:Website and newsletter: www.carolodellmsw.com
Instagram: mosaicofthoughts_Professional FB page: www.facebook.com/cfodellmsw
 
-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.comSubstack: https://substack.com/@ronitplankInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/