Ellen Blum Barish joins Letโs Talk Memoir for a conversation about becoming a memoirist after a career as a journalist and how that deepened her love of writing, the power of working on smaller pieces as we craft our memoir, and finding the themes and structure in our story.
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Ellen Blum Barish is the author of Seven Springs: A Memoir (Shanti Arts, 2021) and Views from the Home Office Window (Adams Street Publishing, 2007). You can find her work in Brevityโs Blog, Full Grown People, Literary Mama, Tablet and The Chicago Tribune. Many of her essays have aired on Chicago Public Radio and have been told on storytelling stages around Chicago. Ellen founded the literary publication Thread, which earned four notables in Best American Essays and has taught writing at Northwestern University where she earned a masterโs in journalism. She works privately with writers and teaches writing workshops on essay collections and memoir.
Seven Springs: A Memoir (Audiobook on Amazon)
Ronitโs essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, The Washington Post, Writerโs 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 both the 2021 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Artsโ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth.
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir.
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Iโm thrilled to announce my memoir When She Comes Back (Motina Books 2021) is now available for purchase. ๐๐๐๐ฃ ๐๐๐ ๐พ๐ค๐ข๐๐จ ๐ฝ๐๐๐ is a coming-of-age memoir set in the 70s and 80s about losing my mother to a guru in India, giving up power, growing up too fast, and what happens when the person your life revolves around canโt stay.
Learn more about Ronit Plank’s story here.ย
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