Let’s Talk Memoir

140. A Love-Hate Social Media and Publishing Relationship featuring Kristen Van Nest

Kristen Van Nest joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how discovered who she was on a global stage and her addiction to travel, loving the growth phase of new projects, how improv and stand up improves our writing, writing funny and the architecture of a joke, having a love-hate relationship with social media and publishing, keeping your ideal reader in mind, marketing our work ourselves and hustling to get our book in front of people, hammering in the theme in our manuscripts, publishing in literary reviews, establishing publishing proofpoints, cold pitching 150 agents, selling on proposal, and her memoir Where to Nest: A Global Search for Love, Cheap Wine and a Place to Belong. 
 
Also mentioned in this episode:
-ghost cities
-bad roommates
-feeling culturally confused
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
What I Was Doing While You Were Breeding by Kristen Newman
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Books by David Sedaris
 
In her debut travel memoir Where to Nest (April 2, 2024, Rising Action Publishing Co.) Kristen Van Nest weaves an entertaining story for anyone who needs a good laugh, travel ideas, and inspiration for ways to add more joy into their lives.
 
After college getting her dream job in New York City, Kristen thought she had everything a modern Millennial was supposed to want: a sexy zip code, a boyfriend, and a corporate job. 
 
But instead of feeling content, she soon realized she had no idea who she was and what made her happy. Naturally, she did what any sane person would do: hopped on a plane and spent the rest of her twenties living abroad and traveling the world in search of love, adventure, and new and exciting places to eat bread.
 
By stripping away the cultural norms and expectations she grew up with in the US, she rebuilt from scratch a new identity, sense of self, and life purpose that ultimately led her to move to Los Angeles to pursue comedy. Through living in Luxembourg on a Fulbright Scholarship and then in China for three years working for a wine importer, Where to Nest takes us across the globe–including nearly being murdered by a lover while skiing in Switzerland, navigating Greece during a banking crisis, and visiting Thailand during a government coup–as a woman struggles to find belonging. 
 
Connect with Kristen:
Website: www.kristenvannest.com
On all channels @KristenVanNest
Link Order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1990253571
YouTube channel on how to work smarter to live better: https://www.youtube.com/c/KristenVanNest
 
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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
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

139. Stepping Outside the Box featuring Jennifer Lang

Jennifer Lang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about asking the right questions, understanding what home means and where it is, being sure to put your story in the narrative you’re sharing, her sense of self on and off the yoga mat, answers to mid-life questions, learning to write flash prose, putting manuscripts away for a while, being a Jewish writer living in Israel, leaning into experimental and playful prose, coping with imminent empty nests, and her new book Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces & Poses.
 
Also mentioned in this episode 
-self-doubt and self censoring
-reading our work aloud
-honing skills as an editor
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
-Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg
-Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by  Amy Krass Rosenthal 
 
Jennifer Lang is a San Francisco Bay Area transplant in Tel Aviv. Last September, she gave birth to her first book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature; in October2024, she welcomes Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses into the world. A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Jennifer was an Assistant Editor at Brevity. Her prize-winning essays appear in Baltimore Review, Under the Sun, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. A longtime yoga instructor, she teaches YogaProse. Findable at www.israelwriterstudio.com 
Connect with Jennifer:
Website: https://israelwriterstudio.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenlangwrites
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenlangwrites/
Ger her book: https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/landed-a-yogi-s-memoir-in-pieces-poses-by-jennifer-lang
BookShop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/landed-a-yogi-s-memoir-in-pieces-poses-jennifer-lang/21684650?ean=9783988320872
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Landed-yogis-memoir-pieces-poses/dp/3988320870/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bd8lRm7rAOuV3k1usbF7vA.M-X19uPxbllhxbajEHxpKmH_KgcTpjocnI07C8iCSdA&qid=1723456516&sr=1-1
 
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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
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

138. Pivoting from the Scholarly to the Very Personal featuring Anne Cheng

Anne Cheng joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pivoting from writing scholarly works on race and gender to writing in first person and quite personally, teaching herself how to say the things that had remained unspoken in her life, her cancer diagnosis and treatment, the rise in anti-Asian violence during the pandemic, the ways Chinese femininity dovetails with Southern femininity, what we don't know about those closest to us, sharing work about our partner with our partner, the cumulative effect of an essay collection, allowing our voice to come through in our writing, and her new book Ordinary Disasters: How I stopped Being a Model Minority. 
 
Also in this episode: 
-feeling braver in writing than in person
-thorny mother-daughter relationships 
-father loss
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong
Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino 
Stay True by Hua Hsu
Docile by Hyeseung Song
 
Anne Anlin Cheng was born in Taiwan, grew up in the American South, and is author of three books on American racial politics and aesthetics. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. She is professor of English and former director of American Studies at Princeton University and lives in Princeton. She is currently Scholar-in-Residence at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. 
Connect with Anne:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/anneanlincheng
Facebook: Anne A. Cheng
Website: https://english.princeton.edu/people/anne-cheng
 
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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
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Season Announcement and More!

Season 5 is coming to an end but season 6 is almost here, along with some more memoir resources and links.
 
 
Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Follow Ronit:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/
Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com/
 
Let’s Talk Memoir is a podcast for memoir lovers, readers and writers, featuring interviews with memoirists about their writing process, their challenges, and what they’ve learned about sharing the most personal of narratives. Hosted by writer, editor, and memoirist Ronit Plank, each episode of this limited series highlights different aspects of the memoir writing experience, writing tips, and inspiration.
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 lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches and edits memoir and is working on her next book.
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

137. The Burden of Family Secrets featuring David Tereshchuk

David Tereshchuk joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being drawn to journalism to help him cure the matter of unanswered questions in his own life, his early years living in the rural borderlands of Scotland, how he turned to alcohol at a very early age, going from from tea and copy boy to anchorman of a nightly news program, becoming sober in his forties, his pursuit of ironclad truth, the place uncertainty holds in our lives, and his resolution to be open-hearted and honest about his life when writing his new memoir A Question of Paternity.
Also in this episode:
-the place uncertainty holds in our lives
-his work in media
-the paradox in his life and work
 
Books:
The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr
Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
Born a Crime by Trevor Noah
 
DAVID TERESHCHUK is a journalist working mainly in broadcast media but also for magazines and newspapers (New York Times, The Guardian, New Statesman). He spent two decades with British commercial television, reporting, producing, and making documentaries, before moving to the US, where he worked for ABC, CBS, CNN, Discovery, A&E and The History Channel. His earliest work included coverage of the guerrilla war in Northern Ireland, and then extended into international issues, especially in the Third World. Since 2012 he has been a producer and correspondent for PBS, concentrating on ethical issues. He broadcasts a weekly public radio dispatch of media criticism, The Media Beat, and writes an online column by the same name. A graduate of Oxford University, he has been a US citizen since 2002 and lives in New York City and Ireland. His memoir, A Question of Paternity: My Life as an Unaffiliated Reporter, was published by Envelope Books on September 19th.
 
Connect with David:
Website: https://www.themediabeat.us/david-tereshchuk/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidtereshchuk
X: https://x.com/dtereshchuk
Facebook: facebook.com/david.tereshchuk
Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Question-Paternity-Life-Unaffiliated-Reporter/dp/1915023157
 
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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 lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches and edits memoir and is working 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://twitter.com/RonitPlank
https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

136. The Wise Narrator on the Page featuring Rachel Zimmerman

Rachel Zimmerman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about rebuilding her family’s life after her husband’s death by suicide, the physical toll of grief, feeling like a doomed family, finding joy and pleasure after terrible loss, how her career in journalism informed her writing process, not tying things up in a bow, our children getting veto power about what we include in our books, when family remembers differently, getting the wise narrator present on the page to transform our experience into a story, and her memoir, Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide. 
 
Also in this episode: 
-how her memoir’s title changed
-taking writing classes
-feeling like a loss freak
 
Books mentioned in this episode: 
The Light of the World by Elizabeth Alexander 
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
Blue Nights by Joan Didion
The Long Goodbye by Megan O’Rourke
Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward
 
Rachel Zimmerman is the author of Us, After: A Memoir of Love and Suicide. An award-winning journalist, Zimmerman has written about health and medicine for more than two decades. She currently contributes stories on mental health to The Washington Post and previously worked as a staff writer for The Wall Street Journal and a health reporter for WBUR, Boston’s public radio station. Her essays and reporting have been published in The New York Times; Vogue; The Cut; O, The Oprah Magazine; The Atlantic; Slate; The Huffington Post; and Brevity, among others. 
 
Zimmerman is co-author of The Healing Power of Storytelling; and The Doula Guide to Birth. She’s been awarded residencies at Millay Arts and the Turkeyland Cove Foundation and currently lives with her family in Cambridge, Mass.
Connect with Rachel:
Website: https://www.rachelzimmerman.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachel.zimmerman13
FB: https://www.facebook.com/rachel.zimmerman.77
X: https://x.com/@zimmerman082
Get her book: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1951631358/ref=sr_1_1?crid=X9DA82X3A2SP&keywords=us+after%3A+a+memoir+of+love+and+suicide&qid=1697209495&s=books&sprefix=us+after+a+memoir+of+love+and+suicide%2Cstripbooks%2C166&sr=1-1
 
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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 lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches and edits memoir and is working 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://twitter.com/RonitPlank
https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

135. Reckoning with What We Need to Write and Learning to Stop Punishing Ourselves featuring Sarah LaBrie

Sarah LaBrie joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the year her mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the legacy of mental illness in her family, rethinking ambitions in light of tragedy and grief, releasing emotional pressure with writing, when fiction doesn’t cut it, finding company for our mental illness stories, knowing why you want to write a memoir, learning to stop punishing ourselves, being a workaholic, processing our stories through writing, and her new memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart.
 
Also in this episode:
-contemplating our parents’ backstory
-reading as much as you can
-ketamine therapy
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Beautiful Days by Zack Williams
Heartberries by Terese Marie Mailhot
The Book of Eels by Patrik Svensson
Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway
Braiding Sweetgrass and all books by Robin Wall Kimmerer
 
Sarah LaBrie is from Houston, TX and is the author of the memoir No One Gets to Fall Apart (HarperCollins, October 2024). She is a TV writer, memoirist, and librettist. Sarah was most recently a producer on the HBO and Starz television show, Minx. She has also written on Blindspotting (Starz), Made for Love (MAX), and Love, Victor (Hulu/Disney). Her libretti have been performed at Walt Disney Concert Hall. Her fiction also appears in Electric Literature's Recommended Reading, Guernica, The Literary Review, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She has held residencies at Yaddo, UCross and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She holds an MFA from New York University, where she was a Writers in the Schools Fellow.
Connect with Sarah:
Website: https://www.sarahlabrielivesinlosangeles.com/
Get her book: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/no-one-gets-to-fall-apart-sarah-labrie?variant=41476933419042
IG: @itsmesarahlabrie
twitter: @sarah_labrie
tiktok: sarahlabrie62
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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, 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
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

134. In Service of Your Story featuring Steve Hoffman

Steve Hoffman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not getting sidetracked from the story you want to tell, the difference between accuracy and truth, coming to terms with who you are, how screenwriting classes improved his memoir, leaning into weaknesses and what we haven’t done well, writing sensorily about food and wine, learning how to tell a story, beyond beautiful prose, vulnerability and the process of changing, expanding our linguistic palates, immersing the reader vs. drowning them in description, embracing what is weird and singular about your life and sharing that on the page, new ways of seeing the same thing, mid-life self-acceptance, and his memoir A Season for That: Lost and Found in the  Other Southern France.
 
Also in this episode:
-accepting our flaws and frailties
-keeping forward propulsion in mind
-deep reading
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
My Father’s Glory by Marcel Pagnol
Right Ho, Jeeves by P.G Wodehouse
The Shipping News by Annie Proulx
The Dead and the Living by Sharon Olds
 
Steve Hoffman is a Minnesota tax preparer and food writer. His writing has won multiple national awards, including the 2019 James Beard M.F.K. Fisher Distinguished Writing Award. He has been published in Food & Wine, The Washington Post, and The Minneapolis Star Tribune, among others. He shares one acre on Turtle Lake, in Shoreview, Minnesota, with his wife, Mary Jo, their elderly and entitled puggle, and roughly 80,000 honeybees.
Connect with Steve:
Website: https://www.sjrhoffman.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sjrhoffman/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sjrhoffmanwriter/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steve-hoffman-6761112/
Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Season-That-Found-Southern-France/dp/0593240286
Press Kit with copy of book: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ziwgi8owbwaoxnvb7wctk/AJS8Fwk5NKHILGum6nnQ4t0?rlkey=xdhrgfmzqd4smh4ct3kxpen2l&st=0nmf301u&dl=0
Photos from our time in France: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/ztxem7efsu10eggtxltv7/AAkjbYta2Svt7tSC7C_np24?rlkey=oglczi4nys1qi1ufb86j4szu4&st=srofkk02&dl=0
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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
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

133. Breaking Through Internal Barricades and Going Deep featuring Seth Lorinczi

Seth Lorinczi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about going from a state of deep hiding to deep sharing, untangling the scars of the Holocaust and world wars through psychedelics, how ancestral trauma can warp relationships with the people we love, when your spouse is a character in your book, writing the truth and the fear of family betrayal, peeling back everything in his life and putting vulnerability into action, and his memoir Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir.
 
Also in this episode:
-attunement
-putting stories in context
-protecting people who don’t want to be in our memoirs
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Scattered Ghosts Nick Farley Barley
Fatherland by Burkhard Bilger
Young Heroes of the Soviet Union by Alex Halberstadt
 
Seth Lorinczi’s writing appears in The Guardian, DoubleBlind, Narratively, Portland Monthly and other print anthologies and periodicals. "Death Trip: A Post-Holocaust Psychedelic Memoir" is his first book. In addition, he was a co-founder of “Judaism & The Psychedelic Renaissance,” a first-of-its-kind live event in Portland.
Connect with Seth:
Website: https://www.sethlorinczi.com/
www.spiralpathcollective.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sethlorinczi/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/seth.lorinczi/
Link to Ronit’s Writer’s Digest article mentioned in this episode: https://www.writersdigest.com/write-better-nonfiction/how-to-approach-friends-and-family-about-your-memoir
 
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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Newsletter sign-up: https://ronitplank.com/#signup
 
Follow Ronit:
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https://twitter.com/RonitPlank
https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank
 
Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

132. Writing Lyrically About the Perceptual Richness of Altered Sight featuring Naomi Cohn

Naomi Cohn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about becoming legally blind in mid-life and how that changed her writing process, going from poetry to lyric essay, falling in love with Braille, being sure something is done and also realizing there’s more, reading our work aloud, privacy and what’s ours to tell, the perceptual richness of having altered sight, tapping into our senses, Liz Lerman’s Critical Response Process, nonlinear logic, writing in small chunks, being curious, trusted readers, and her new book The Braille Encyclopedia.
Also in this episode:
-prose poems 
-tapping into the nonlinear
-ableism
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
What It Is by Lynda Barry
Pain Woman Takes Your Keys by Sonya Huber
Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
The Periodic Table by Primo Levi
 
Naomi Cohn, author of the debut memoir THE BRAILLE ENCYCLOPEDIA, is a writer and teaching artist who works with older adults and people living with disabilities. Her past includes a childhood among Chicago academics; art-making: editing Disclosure, a national publication on community organizing; involvement in a guerrilla feminist art collective; and work as an encyclopedia copy editor, community organizer, fundraiser, nonprofit consultant, and therapist. Red Dragonfly Press published her chapbook, Between Nectar & Eternity, in 2013. Her poetry and essays have also appeared in Baltimore Review, Hippocampus, Nimrod, Poetry and, Terrain, among other places. She makes her home in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Connect with Naomi:
https://naomi-cohn.com/
Order Naomi’s Book: https://rosemetalpress.com/books/the-braille-encyclopedia/
Attend Naomi’s Reading Events: https://rosemetalpress.com/readings-events/
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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash
Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography
Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers