Let’s Talk Memoir

128. Deep Memoir featuring Jennifer Selig

Jennifer Selig joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how our narratives are both unique and universal, archetypical strategies to connect with readers, writing ourselves into meaning, assuaging the fear the world might not need our memoir, following our memories and trusting order will come later, the many different structures a memoir can embody including segmented, blended, and researched, the interplay of memory, imagination, and truth, avoiding gimmicks, the memoirist as archaeologist, and her new book Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepen Your Story and Broaden Its Appeal.
 
Also in this episode: 
-the vagaries of memory’s tricks and confusions
-the idea of comparative suffering
-our story as dynamic, organic, and authentic 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Somebody's Daughter by Ashley C. Ford
Eva and Eve by JulieMetz
The Recovering by Leslie Jamison
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
Write-Minded Podcast
 
Jennifer Leigh Selig’s writing and teaching career spans four decades. She’s the author of dozens of newspaper articles, book reviews, essays, journal articles, short stories, screenplays, and books including in this decade "The Writer’s Block Workbook: A Psychologist’s Guide to Working With and Through Writer’s Block," and the Nautilus Gold award-winning book "Deep Creativity: Seven Ways to Spark Your Creative Spirit. "Jennifer earned her PhD in Jungian and Archetypal Studies at Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, California, and went on to teach there for a dozen years. It was at Pacifica where she first began teaching memoir in a popular 9-month certificate program called “Writing Down the Soul” with her colleague Maureen Murdock. She gathered all the content she created and published it in her latest book, "Deep Memoir: An Archetypal Approach to Deepen Your Story and Broaden Its Appeal." Jennifer lives in the Bay Area in California, and owns a publishing company, Mandorla Books, where she also publishes memoir.
Connect with Jennifer:
Website: www.jenniferleighselig.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.selig.1/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jenniferselig/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferleighselig/
Links for courses: https://www.jenniferleighselig.com/deep-dive-courses.html
Link to her book publishing company: www.mandorlabooks.com
–
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:
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

127. Re-Archiving Traumatic Memories Through Memoir to Help Forget in Healthy Ways featuring Jay Baron Nicorvo

Jay Baron Nicorvo joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about his mother’s violent rape and how that event coincided with his sexual abuse at the hands of his babysitter, the pervasiveness of sexual abuse for boys and men, how crucial scenes are in memoir and also how difficult to render, exposition to give the reader and ourselves breaks from difficult material, being a multi-genre writer, on not becoming an art monster, why it’s hard to read the publishing market, leaving an agent, outlasting crushing rejection and so many no’s, exploring and thinking deeply about our obsessions, traumatic memories and the way memoir affects them, how lies work, the experience vs. writing the experience, the impact of desertion on children and his new memoir Best Copy Available.
 
Also in this episode:
-writing in the second person
-needing and reaching for support
-allowing ourselves to be surprised by our material
Books mentioned in this episode:
 
The Natural History of Love by Diane Ackerman
My Dark Places by James Ellroy
The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
 
JAY BARON NICORVO’s true-crime memoir, BEST COPY AVAILABLE, won the AWP Award selected by Geoff Dyer. His novel, THE STANDARD GRAND, landed at #8 on the Indie Next List, and his poetry collection, DEADBEAT, debuted on the Poetry Foundation bestseller list.
 
Connect with Jay:
Website: https://www.nicorvo.net
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jbnicorvo
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jay.baronnicorvo
x: https://x.com/jbnicorvo
Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/best-copy-available-a-true-crime-memoir-jay-baron-nicorvo/21321293?ean=9780820367361
–
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:
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

126. Writing with a Sense of Exploration and Curiosity featuring Lilly Dancyger

Lilly Dancyger joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the challenges of existing in the world as a woman, approaching the writing process with a sense of exploration and curiosity, discovering what's really essential and what can we let go of, the nitty-gritty of writing an essay, getting clarity on our material, finding the container to write about what we need to write, articulating the connections we’re making, girlhood, going off the rails as a teenager, how grief and art can be inextricably linked, the tug to write about close relationships with women, living in community and caring for each other, and her book First Love: A Collection of Essays on Friendship.
 
Also in this episode:
-sad girls
-tending to friendships
-being open to not knowing where the story is going to go
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Helter Skelter by Vincent Bugliosio
The Stranger Beside Me by Ann Rule
I’ll Be Gone in the Dark by Michelle McNamara
The Heart and Other Monsters by Rose Anderson
Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway
Stay True by Hua Hsu
Girlhood by Melissa Febos
White Magic by Elissa Washuta
The Clean Life by CJ Hauser
Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones
Love is a Burning Thing by Nina St. Pierre
 
Lilly Dancyger is the author of First Love: Essays on Friendship (The Dial Press, 2024), and Negative Space (SFWP, 2021). She lives in New York City, and is a 2023 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in nonfiction from The New York Foundation for the Arts. Her writing has been published by Guernica, Literary Hub, The Rumpus, Longreads, Off Assignment, The Washington Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, and more. She teaches creative nonfiction in MFA programs at Columbia University and Randolph College. Find her on Instagram at @lillydancyger and Substack at The Word Cave.
 
Connect with Lilly:
Website: https://www.lillydancyger.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lillydancyger/
X: https://twitter.com/lillydancyger
Substack: https://lillydancyger.substack.com/
Get her book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/714347/first-love-by-lilly-dancyger/
Learn more about her classes: https://www.lillydancyger.com/classes
 
–
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:
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

125. The Many Different Versions of Ourselves on the Page featuring Brooke Champagne

Brooke Champagne joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about rejecting and accepting identity, growing up in New Orleans and feeling bifurcated by race, language, and class, knowing you’re a writer, humor on the page, selecting work for a collection, why we write, watching ourselves continue to make the same mistakes, deciding what stories are ours, how much permission we ask, preparing for editorial work on our projects, keeping the bigger picture in mind, the many different versions of ourselves, seeing yourself as a persona, and her new book Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy.
 
Also in this episode:
-writing about trauma
-Proust
-the nature of art and truth
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick
The Lifespan of a Fact by John Degoda
Hell if We Don’t Change Our Ways by Brittany Means
 
Brooke Champagne is the author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy, published with the Crux Series in Literary Nonfiction at the University of Georgia Press. Nola Face has received starred reviews from Kirkus and Independent Book Review. Champagne’s work has been selected as Notable in several editions of the Best American Essays anthology series, and she is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose. She lives with her husband and children in Tuscaloosa, where she is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing in the MFA Program at the University of Alabama.
 
Connect with Brooke:
Website: https://www.brookechampagne.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BuggyGirl
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/champagne_brooke/
x: https://x.com/brchampagne
Get Nola Face: https://ugapress.org/book/9780820366531/nola-face/
 
–
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:
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

124. Excavating a Sister’s Story featuring Deborah Kasdan

Deborah Kasdan joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her older sister’s schizophrenia diagnosis, the decision to commit a child, family dynamics and epigenetics, what it is to be marginalized and hidden away, writing expressively, thematic and chronological decisions, digging further and digging deeper, the conflict alive inside us, landing on a book cover, finishing her sister’s story, guilt about our loved ones and giving them a voice in our work, and her memoir Roll Back the World.
 
Also mentioned in this episode:
-sibling reaction to our memoirs
-experimenting and trying again
-writing the scenes that press themselves upon us
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
-Is There No Place for Me by Susan Sheehan
-The Eden Express by Mark Vonnegut
-The Center Cannot Hold by Elyn R. Saks
-The Memory Palace by Mira Bartok
-The Soloist by Steve Lopez
 
Chosen as one of Kirkus Reviews’ Best Indie books of 2023, and a Foreword Reviews finalist, Deborah Kasdan’s memoir shows the impact of serious mental illness on her late sister Rachel, as well as on herself and their entire family. It also reveals the healing power of writing. Kasdan had a 35-year career writing about business and technology before retiring from corporate work and uncovering her creative side. Kasdan grew up in the Midwest and now lives in Norwalk, Connecticut with her husband. In addition to writing and making family history come alive, her times of greatest joy occur when she is reading, swimming or visiting with her four grandchildren.
Connect with Deborah:
Website: www.deborahkasdan.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/debkasdan
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/debkasdan
X: https://x.com/debkasdan
 
–
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:
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

123. Balancing the Child and Adult Voice featuring Katya Cengel

Katya Cengel joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the three months she spent as a child in a psychosomatic ward, her career in journalism, institutionalization and treating kids with mental illness, working with case files, using the journalist persona, growing up being scapegoated, balancing the child and adult voice, reliving painful events, turning the focus on ourselves, family response to memoir, and her memoir Straitjackets and Lunch Money.
 
Also in this episode:
-family dynamics
-taking care of our mental health when writing memoir
-preadolescent eating disorders
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
-It’s Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini
-Girl Interrupted by Susanna Kaysen
-Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan
-The Great Pretender by Susannah Cahalan
 
Katya Cengel is the author of four non-fiction books, including most recently Straitjackets and Lunch Money, which the San Francisco Chronicle called “incredibly affecting” and Kirkus Reviews called “harrowing but engrossing”. Cengel’s earlier titles cover everything from minor league baseball in Bluegrass Baseball to falling in love at Chernobyl in From Chernobyl with Love. She has received an Eric Hoffer Academic Press award, an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY), and a Foreword INDIES.
 
As a journalist Cengel has written for New York Times Magazine, Smithsonian Magazine and Atavist Magazine among others. Her writing has taken her to Utah to search for Bigfoot (she didn’t find him) and to Mongolia to write about female street artists. Her stories have received a Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Award and a Society for Features Journalism Excellence-in-Features Award.
Connect with Katya:
Website: www.katyacengel.com
X (Twitter): https://x.com/kcengel
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/katyacengel
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/katya.cengel/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/katya-cengel-7b7b4214/
Get the book: https://www.woodhallpress.com/product-page/strait-jackets-and-lunch-money
https://bookshop.org/p/books/straitjackets-and-lunch-money-a-10-year-old-in-a-psychosomatic-ward-katya-cengal/19786290?ean=9781954907683
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1954907680/ref=x_gr_bb_amazon?ie=UTF8&tag=x_gr_bb_amazon-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1954907680&SubscriptionId=1MGPYB6YW3HWK55XCGG2
 
–
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:
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

122. Uncovering a Lost Family History featuring Margaret Juhae Lee

Margaret Juhae Lee joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about searching for her family’s lost history, growing up as a first generation Korean American living in Houston, archival work and interviewing relatives, capturing family voice, why we search to understand painful things, knowing ourselves as writers, finding structure later, the time to digest material, reading historical fiction with a critical eye, generative writing workshops, curbing self-editing tendencies, what home means, not giving up, and her memoir Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History.
 
Also in this episode:
-conveying immediacy through present tense
-investigative journalism
-writing in community
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
-The Situation and the Story by Vivan Gornick
-All other books by Vivian Gornick
 
Margaret Juhae Lee is the author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History (Melville House). A former editor at The Nation magazine, she received a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korea Foundation. Her articles have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Rumpus and Writer's Digest. She lives in Oakland with her family and Brownie, a rescue dog from Korea. 
Connect with Margaret:
Website: www.margaretjuhaelee.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjuhae
X: https://x.com/margaretjuhae
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margaret.lee.790
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-juhae-lee-2b95905/
Starry Field: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741044/starry-field-by-margaret-juhae-lee/
 
–
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:
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

121. Allowing Scenes and Dialogue to Do The Work featuring Becky Ellis

Becky Ellis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in the shadow of a father’s war trauma, what happens when soldiers come home, the power of secrets, the divided self and why memoirists need to be clear about their psychology, strategies for creating palpable worlds, avoiding judgment in our pages, making scenes and dialogue do the work of exposition, how memoir changes lives, creating tension, letting readers into our interior worlds, and her memoir Little Avalanches.
 
Also in this episode:
-telling the story we need to read
-setting character stakes
-trusting the reader
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Story by Robert McKee 
Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
This Boys Life by Tobias Wolf 
The Liars Club by Mary Karr
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Allison
Authors: Tim O’Brien, Rebecca Makkai, Maggie O’Farrell 
 
Becky Ellis is a Timberwolf Pup. The daughter of a highly decorated World War II combat sergeant, she is a veteran of a war fought at home. She earned a BA in English Literature at UC Berkeley and has over twenty years of experience in the publishing industry. She teaches writing in Portland, Oregon, where she lives, plays, and has raised three daughters. Little Avalanches is her debut memoir. 
Connect with Becky: 
Website: https://beckyellis.net/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beckyellisauthor/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/becky.ellis.9081/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/becky-ellis-4084149/
–
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:
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

120. What Remains Unsolved In Us featuring Jaclyn Moyer

Jaclyn Moyer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about excavating what remains unsolved within us, clueing the reader in early in our pages, how each draft leads to a door to the next, leaning into uncomfortable feelings, trusting the writing process, understanding more about her Punjabi heritage, her fraught relationship with her grandparents, Sonora wheat and the organic farming movement, addressing the wreckage of our food system, the intimacy of the natural world, and her new memoir On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family from Punjab to California.
 
Also in this episode: 
-what set’s us off on our journey
-integrating different parts of ourselves in our pages
-braiding narratives 
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
The Art of Waiting by Belle Boggs 
On Immunity by Eula Biss
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong
I’m a Stranger Here Myself by Debra Gwartney
 
Jaclyn Moyer is the author of On Gold Hill: A Personal History of Wheat, Farming, and Family from Punjab to California. Her essays and journalism have appeared in The Atlantic, High Country News, Salon, Guernica, Orion, Ninth Letter and other publications. She's received fellowships and support from Fishtrap, Wildbranch Writing Workshop, The Elizabeth Kostova Foundation, Community of Writers, and Spring Creek Project, and was a finalist for the PEN/Fusion Emerging Writers Prize. She has worked as a vegetable farmer, bread baker, teacher, and native seed collector. Originally from northern California’s Sierra Foothills, she currently lives in Corvallis, Oregon with her partner and two young children.
Website: www.jaclynmoyer.com
Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/on-gold-hill-a-personal-history-of-wheat-farming-and-family-from-punjab-to-california-jaclyn-moyer/20221306?ean=9780807045305
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Gold-Hill-Personal-History-California/dp/0807045306
Grassroots Bookstore: https://grassrootsbookstore.com/item/VdT28uSLKvb371iRsDWG3w
—
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:
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

119. Leaning into Honesty, the Darkly Funny, and the Jewish featuring Gila Pfeffer

Gila Pfeffer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about outsmarting genetic destinies and her preventative double mastectomy, remembering what’s at stake in our work, tempering the serious with a satirical lens, honing humor in our work, smart book titles and SEO, advocating for our book cover, considering both the art value and marketing value in our memoirs, fostering a humor-writing community, writing about being Jewish, depicting ourselves honestly, and her new memoir Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences.
 
Also in this episode:
-choosing how much to explain
-conveying rituals
-writing classes
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
-Genius and Anxiety by Norman Lebrecht
-Inheritance by Dani Shapiro
-Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
-Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris
-Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Best Kalb
-My Mess is a Bit of a Life by Georgia Pritchett
 
Gila Pfeffer is a Jewish American humor writer and personal essayist whose debut memoir, NEARLY DEPARTED: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences, is out now. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Today.com, and elsewhere. Gila’s monthly “Feel It on the First” campaign reminds women to prioritize their breast health. A mother of four grown children, she splits her time between New York City and London.
Connect with Gila:
Website: gilapfeffer.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gilapfeffer
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@gilapfeffer?xmt=AQGzcrgWO3KjUCrvxqH6-VUVEQcOffv4SUmjnKPrnIvRoeI
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Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gilapfeffer
Publisher site: https://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/summer-2024/nearly-departed/
 
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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