Let’s Talk Memoir

101. The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Grief featuring Lisa Keefauver

Lisa Keefauver MSW and host of the popular podcast Grief is a Sneaky Bitch joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about what happens when we revisit our stories to more deeply understand what has happened in our lives, a look at ambiguous loss, the shoulds and shouldn'ts about grief we tell ourselves that can cause us unnecessary suffering, grief brain, memoir writing for insight and self-compassion, earning reader trust, deep mindfulness, pausing even when we have deadlines, and exercises to calm our nervous system from her new book Grief is a Sneaky Bitch.
 
Also in this episode:
-showing our full selves on the page
-soothing the nervous system
-how we speak to ourselves 
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Fifty-Seven Fridays by Myra Sack
Finding the Words by Colin Campbell
What Looks Like Bravery by Laurel Braitman
When She Comes Back by Ronit Plank
 
Lisa Keefauver, MSW is a grief activist and the founder of Reimagining Grief. Lisa has more than two decades of professional experiences with grief and loss; working as a social worker, narrative therapist, and educator within multiple settings from non-profits to corporations and universities. Lisa's wisdom and understanding of grief is also embodied from her personal losses including the death of her husband in 2011.
 
Lisa's grief advocacy has inspired her to create and host the top-rated podcast, Grief is a Sneaky Bitch; serve as an adjunct professor of Loss and Grief at the University of Texas at Austin; act as an organizational consultant to facilitate grief-smart organizations; write/appear as a thought leader across media platforms. Watch her popular TEDx Talk, Why Knowing More About Grief Can Make it Suck Less. You can pre-order her heavily anticipated book, Grief Is A Sneaky Bitch: An Uncensored Guide to Navigating Loss now. It arrives in bookstores June 4, 2024.
 
Connect with Lisa:
Website: www.lisakeefauver.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisakeefauvermsw/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisakeefauvermsw/
Podcast on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/grief-is-a-sneaky-bitch/id1474558908
Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCPQt3ARzpzeRl5ckN1k-h-g
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Lisakeefauvermsw
Get the book on Bookshop
Get the book on Amazon
—
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

100. Holding Space to Write the Truth of Our Lives featuring Linda Joy Myers

Linda Joy Myers, founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers and memoir coach joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about helping memoirists become their own good editors, keeping both the vertical and linear in mind when writing our stories, the importance of breaks when working on traumatic material, how writing puts our experience in perspective, finding a writing cohort, leaving bad writing groups, what we remember vs. what really happened, why truth is complicated, and the evolution of memoir.
 
Also in this episode:
-her latest class offerings
-fending off the inner critic
-the promise we make to the reader
 
Books mentioned in this episode: 
-Bluets by Maggie Nelson
-In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
-You Could Make this Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
-Wild by Cheryl Strayed
-Books by Abigail Thomas
 
Linda Joy Myers, founder of the National Association of Memoir Writers, is the author of award-winning memoirs Don't Call Me Mother and Song of the Plains, and two books on craft The Power of Memoir, & Journey of Memoir. She co-authored Breaking Ground on Your Memoir and Magic of Memoir & co-teaches Write Your Memoir in Six Months with Brooke Warner. A memoir coach for 30 years, she helps writers find their voice and get their story into the world. Linda Joy’s prize-winning first novel, The Forger of Marseille was released in 2023.
 
Connect with Linda:
https://www.namw.org/
http://lindajoymyersauthor.com
https://www.facebook.com/linda.j.myers
https://www.instagram.com/lindajoymyersauthor/
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindajoy/
Get Linda’s Book
 
—
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

99. Reclaiming Our Voice, Story, and Agency featuring Hannah Sward

Hannah Sward joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how she never wanted to be a writer let alone write a memoir, attachment theory and being abandoned by her mother, creating boundaries with loved ones, compassion for the children we were, her experience writing about working in the sex trade and being addicted to crystal meth, when acceptance is a form of forgiveness, feeling overwhelmed by feedback, how structure can be confounding, reclaiming our voice, story, and agency, creating a stark narrative, and her memoir Strip.
 
Also in this episode:
-comparing ourselves to other writers
-writing every day 
-feeling free to write the sh*ttiest sh*t
-trusting ourselves
 
Books mentioned in this episode: 
Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg 
Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life by Anne Lamott
 
Hannah Sward, daughter of the late poet Robert Sward, is the IAN awarding-winning author of Strip: A Memoir. Strip, Swards first book, has received the attention of authors such as Nobel Prize winner, J.M. Coetzee, Melissa Broder, and NYT Bestselling novelist Caroline Leavitt who called Sward, “One of the most moving and honest memoir writers. So eloquent, so brave.”  Sward has appeared on NBC CA Live, C-SPAN BookTV, dozens of podcasts, panels, and in magazines and newspapers such as the LA Times and Recovery Today. Sward lives in Los Angeles where she coaches writers and is working on her next book. To find out more hannahsward.com
Connect with Hannah:
Website: https://www.hannahsward.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/hannahswardauthor
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hannahswardauthor
Threads: https://www.threads.net/@hannahswardauthor
Bookshop.org:
https://bookshop.org/p/books/strip-a-memoir-hannah-sward/18101649?ean=9781948954679
Amazon: https://a.co/d/dLQD8rP
—
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

98. The Immersive, Lyric Memoir and Becoming Unstuck from Shame featuring Anne Gudger

Anne Gudger joins Let’s Talk memoir for a conversation about loss and choosing love every day, giving grief a microphone, voice-driven writing and breaking structure rules, essays for platform-building, holding both the raw experience and the long view, the legacy of shame and becoming unstuck, shifting energy in our bodies, and the metaphysical and spiritual components of her memoir The Fifth Chamber.
 
Also in this episode:
-journaling as source material
-normalizing grief
-taking care ourselves when working on painful material
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Chronology of Water by Lidia Yuknavitch
Bluets by Maggie Nelson
Group by Christie Tate
 
Anne Gudger is a memoir/essay writer who writes hard and loves harder. She’s the author of THE FIFTH CHAMBER, published by Jaded Ibis Press September 2023. She's been published in multiple journals including The Rumpus, Real Simple Magazine, Tupelo Quarterly, Sweet Lit, Cutthroat, CutBank, Columbia Journal, The Normal School, Los Angeles Review, and elsewhere. She's won four essay contests and has been a Best of the Net Nominee twice. March 2020 she and her daughter founded Coffee and Grief: a community that includes a monthly reading series. Everybody grieves and when we share grief we feel less alone. She also co-created the podcast: Coffee, Grief, and Gratitude. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her beloved husband. 
 
Connect with Anne:
Website: https://www.annegudger.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/annegudger/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/anne.gudger
Get Anne’s Book: https://bit.ly/3nZIvEy
Write Your Grief Out: https://writeyourgriefout.thinkific.com/courses/writeyourgriefoutOct
 
—
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

97. A Conversation with Nonfiction Director at Ballantine Books Sara Weiss

Sara Weiss joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the path to her career in publishing and her role as Nonfiction Director and Ballantine, what memoir writers always need to ask themselves, her interest in memoir with purpose, the blockbuster model and the editorial decision making process, building a writing community, how many books we can realistically sell, making our work ready, and the pace of publishing these days.   Also in this episode: -the importance of voice, platform, and hook -selling on proposals and fulls -how all writers need to hustle   Book mentioned in this episode: Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett Wild by Cheryl Strayed Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo The In-Between by Hadley Vlahos R.N. Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth GIlbert Educated by Tara Westover   Sara Weiss (she/her) is the Editorial Director for Nonfiction at Ballantine, where she focuses mostly on nonfiction, while also publishing select fiction titles. She’s been privileged to publish bestselling and critically acclaimed authors such as Linda Holmes, R. Eric Thomas, Emily Nagoski, Stephanie Foo, Hadley Vlahos, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Cody Rigsby, Hannah Gadsby, Annie Hartnett, Lilly Singh, and Lauren Graham. Her upcoming list includes NBC News reporter Yamiche Alcindor’s memoir, Don’t Forget and the novel, Blue Sisters, by Coco Mellors.  
 
More about Ballantine:https://www.randomhousebooks.com/imprint/ballantine-books/    
 

96. Memoir Through A Mythic Lens featuring Maureen Murdock

Maureen Murdock joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how myths help excavate our stories, memoir as a way to reclaim the past,  invisible primary patterns in the psyche, letting ourselves meander and reflect, using process journals to excavate fears about being vulnerable, allowing structure to emerge, a favorite prompt of hers, and her latest book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas
The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
The Color of Water by James McBride
Smile by Sarah Ruhl
Know My Name by Chanel Miller
Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer
 
Maureen Murdock, Ph.D. is the author of her new book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir and the author of the best-selling book, The Heroine’s Journey, which explores the rich territory of the feminine psyche and has been translated into twenty languages. Maureen is also author of Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Fathers’ Daughters: Breaking the Ties that Bind; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook. She is the editor of an anthology entitled Monday Morning Memoirs: Women in the Second Half of Life and teaches memoir for the International Women’s Writing Guild and in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s program, Writing Down the Soul. Maureen was Chair and Core Faculty of the M.A. Counseling Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has written pieces for the Huffington Post on criminal justice and volunteers for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) with inmates at Lompoc Federal Prison.
 
Connect with Maureen:
Website: www.maureenmurdock.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murdockmaureen
Facebook: www.facebook.com/maureen.murdock/author
Get Maureen’s Book: https://www.shambhala.com/mythmaking.html
 
—
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
 
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

95. The Gift of a Late Diagnosis and a Life of Service featuring Vickie Rubin

Vickie Rubin joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about raising a child with medical complexities and intellectual disabilities, submicroscopic chromosomal deletions, incorporating clippings, news articles, and photographs in memoir, when you feel something is wrong with your child, her career in the helping field, overcoming marriage struggles while raising children with disabilities, advocating for other families and for herself, the gift of a late diagnosis, the decision to move her daughter to a group home, and her memoir Raising Jess: A Story of Hope.
 
Also in this episode:
-when pediatricians don’t listen
-journal entries as resources
-raising children of siblings with disabilities
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Left on Tenth Delia Ephron
The Shape of Normal by Catherine Shields
The Color of Love by Marra Gad
 
Vickie Schlanger Rubin, M.S Ed. is a three-time award-winning author of the inspiring memoir, Raising Jess: A Story of Hope. She is an experienced public speaker and passionate advocate for families of children with disabilities. Vickie's essays are published in Newsweek (My Turn), Buffalo News Opinion (My View), and guest blogs worldwide. She is a frequent Podcast guest sharing information about raising a child with a disability, inspiring hope, family dynamics, education, and advocacy. Her blog, Vickie's Views (www.vickierubin.com), gives a heartwarming and humorous view of everyday life.
Before writing her book, Vickie was the director of the Early Childhood Direction Center (ECDC) for Oishei Children's Hospital, Kaleida Health, a New York State Education Department grant-funded program. During her career, Vickie was a frequent guest speaker at local colleges and universities and was an adjunct teacher in the Exceptional Education Department at Buffalo State College.
Vickie holds a master's degree in Exceptional Education from SUNY Buffalo State College and resides in Western New York. She and her husband Mitch celebrated their 42nd wedding anniversary, and they have three children, three grandchildren, and two very active dogs. 
 
Connect with Vickie:
Vickie’s Views- https://vickierubin.com/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RaisingJessStory
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/raisingjessstory.vickierubin/
X ( Twitter)- https://twitter.com/vickierubin
LinkedIn- https://www.linkedin.com/in/vickie-rubin-aa1a09177/
Threads- https://www.threads.net/@vickierubin.author
Get Raising Jess: https://www.amazon.com/Raising-Jess-Story-Vickie-Rubin/dp/1662407416
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/raising-jess-vickie-rubin/1139804006
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Raising-Jess-A-Story-of-Hope-Paperback-9781662407413/443928331
 
—
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
Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
 
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

94. Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow featuring Steve Almond

Steve Almond joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the ambivalence memoirists often experience when writing about others, the story underneath the story we are telling, disrupting the negative feedback loop of writer’s block, dialing the ego down, questions of inner life, his contribution to Dear Sugars podcast, generosity and mercy in our work, performing versus storytelling, how our failures are actually are teachers, and his new book on writing, Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow.
 
Also in this episode:
-the contract we make with the reader
-the surrender involved in writing
-holding other people in our stories 
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
Wild by Cheryl Strayed
Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway
Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
Truth and Beauty by Anne Patchett
We Learn Nothing by Tim Kreider
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Notes of a Native Son by James Baldwin
A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley
Duke of Deception by Geoffrey Wolff
Pieces of My Mother by Melissa Cistero
Work by Nora Ephron and Joan Didion
Steve Almond is the author of a dozen books, including the NYT Bestsellers “Candyfreak” and “Against Football.” His novel, “All the Secrets of the World” has been optioned for TV by 20th Century Fox. His new book, “Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow” and his stories and essays have appeared in venues ranging from the New York Times Magazine to Best American Short Stories, Best American Mysteries, and Best American Erotica. He teaches at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism and lives outside Boston with his family.
 
Connect with Steve:
Website: www.stevealmondjoy.org
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/stevealmondjoy
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/steve.almond.33
Steve’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Arrow-Mercy-Bow-Construction/dp/1638931305
 
—
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
Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
 
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

93. The Situation and the Story featuring Ms. Vivian Gornick

Acclaimed memoirist and teacher Vivian Gornick joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the origins of her approach to memoir, the crucial difference between situations and stories, why implicating ourselves in our work makes us trustworthy to our reader, clarifying our narratives, how she discovered what her story was truly about, why some writing questions are unanswerable, and her well-loved and oft-repeated advice: “In order for the drama to deepen we must see the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.”
Also in this episode:
-Autofiction
-the importance of trusted readers and editors
-seeing ourselves clearly
 
Books mentioned in this episode:
-Autofiction by Annie Ernaux
-The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick
-Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick
-The Odd Woman and the City by Vivian Gornick
Vivian Gornick is a feminist critic, journalist, essayist, and memoirist who was born in the Bronx and grew up in a family of working-class immigrants.  Meghan O’Rourke of The Yale Review describes her as having written some of the most remarkable journalism of our time. “Her career got its start in the heady days of second-wave feminism, which she wrote about for the alternative weekly The Village Voice. In her work, she cultivated a fierce and unapologetic intellectual voice that could also be intensely personal. Another way to put it: she made powerful, no-holds-barred arguments, but she was also a gifted storyteller.”
She is the recipient of a Ford Foundation grant and a Guggenheim Fellowship and her essays and articles have appeared in Bookforum, the Los Angeles Times, the Nation, the New York Times Book Review, the New Yorker, Threepenny Review, and the Women's Review of Books. She taught for many years in MFA programs all over the country, including those at the University of Houston, the University of Arizona, Sarah Lawrence College, and the New School in New York City, and in 2015 she served as the Bedell Distinguished Visiting Professor in the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program.
Some of her books include The Men In My Life, The End of the Novel of Love, Approaching Eye Level, Essays in Feminism, The Odd Woman and the City, Fierce Attachments, and The Situation and the Story.
—
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
Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
 
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

92. Protecting Ourselves When Writing About Others featuring Cait West

Cait West joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in and leaving Christian patriarchy, indoctrination, identifying and writing about the rifts she felt in herself and her family, gender oppression, using geology as a metaphor, moving from memoir in essays to a more linear form, ethical and legal concerns when writing about others, coming to grips with abuse, purity culture, and her memoir Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy.
Also in this episode:
-protecting anonymity in those we write about
-trauma therapy
-protecting ourselves by taking breaks when writing 
 
Books mentioned in this episode: 
-Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies
-Flesh and Blood by N. West Moss
-Wiving by Caityln Myer
 
Cait West is a writer and editor based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her work has been published in The Revealer, Religion Dispatches, Fourth Genre, and Hawai`i Pacific Review, among others. As an advocate and a survivor of the Christian patriarchy movement, she serves on the editorial board for Tears of Eden, a nonprofit providing resources for survivors of spiritual abuse, and cohosts the podcast Survivors Discuss. Her debut memoir, Rift: A Memoir of Breaking Away from Christian Patriarchy, releases on April 30, 2024.
 
Connect with Cait:
Website: https://www.caitwest.com/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/caitwestwrites
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@caitwestwrites
Substack: https://caitwest.substack.com/
Get Cait’s Book: https://www.caitwest.com/book
—
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
Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank
Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd
 
Follow Ronit:
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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