Let’s Talk Memoir with Ronit Plank & Guests

"Ronit is the Terry Gross of Memoir." - Nic Sims

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, speaker, and memoirist Ronit Plank, each episode of this limited series highlights different aspects of the memoir writing experience, writing tips, and inspiration.

Recently on Let’s Talk Memoir

Episode 253 ft. D/Annie Liontas

Episode 253 ft. D/Annie Liontas

D/Annie Liontas joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about suffering 3 brain injuries in one year and how that changed their relationship to their body and to the world, post-concussive syndrome, how science is delayed around all things female body, gender and...

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About The Host

Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, 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 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 Arts’ 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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"Finally, a memoir-themed podcast with an educated, skilled host who welcomes a spectrum of writers. The topics are so helpful to me in this stage of my writing career. I look forward to each new episode. Thank you, Ronit Plank. "

"Ronit is an excellent interviewer who brings in an array of guests demonstrating wisdom and vulnerability in navigating some of the hardest situations in life. This podcast is a guiding light."

"This is my go-to show about writing. It offers both depth and conciseness. Every episode I've listened to has added to my understanding and appreciation of modern memoirs."

"Ronit is an expert interviewer. Every episode of her show is packed with great conversations and so much wisdom. This is a must-listen for every memoirist."

"Ronit Plank is shining a bright, white spotlight on memoir. Her intimate knowledge of the genre coupled with excellent interviewing skills allow memoir writers, lovers of memoir, and anyone who's ever wondered what memoir is all about to gain insight. Her guests reveal vulnerable truths along with craft tips, their journeys to publishing, and books that inspired them. This is a professional, insightful podcast that's not to be missed."

“Wonderful in every way. Excellent interviews from an outstanding Interviewer."

"MFA by Podcast! Such great insight from hundreds of memoirists! My fav!"

Other Episodes

Episode 218 ft. Gretchen McGowan

Episode 218 ft. Gretchen McGowan

Gretchen McGowan joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the grit and glam of the 90s in New York, her career producing independent films, the thrill of creating something from nothing, honoring our own process, willing to be self-deprecating, negotiating...

Episode 217 ft. Sarah Gallucci

Episode 217 ft. Sarah Gallucci

Sarah Gallucci joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being the child of a teen mom and early influences on ideas of love and relationships, pivoting from journalism to reporting on her own life, the hey day of mommy blogging, when relationships become...

Episode 216 ft. Elizabeth Rynecki and Tony Kaplan

Episode 216 ft. Elizabeth Rynecki and Tony Kaplan

Elizabeth Rynecki and Tony Kaplan join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about multi-disciplinary approaches to memoir, the different skills we need for storytelling modalities, their new podcast That Sinking Feeling: Adventures in ADHD and Ship Salvage, searching...

Episode 215 ft. Sarah Chauncey

Episode 215 ft. Sarah Chauncey

Sarah Chauncey joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her many careers in writing, working on a memoir and deciding not to publish, framing the story we want to tell, experiencing ourselves as a part of living system, going deeper and becoming more...

Episode 214 ft. Kaila Yu

Episode 214 ft. Kaila Yu

Kaila Yu joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how she hated writing at first and has had an accidental career in it, how she had no intention of writing a memoir, selling a book on proposal and pitching off a timely event, racial and sexually motivated...

Episode 213 ft. Tamara Jong

Episode 213 ft. Tamara Jong

Tamara Jong joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up Jehovah’s Witness, her mother's untimely passing, losing faith, disguising who we are, trying multiple approaches to a writing practice, navigating material that resists us, becoming vulnerable,...

Episode 211 ft. Edgar Gomez

Episode 211 ft. Edgar Gomez

Edgar Gomez joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up poor in Florida, wanting to believe in the American dream and realizing it’s not accessible, surviving a precarious childhood, reckoning with trauma, grappling with and excavating shame, what...

Episode 210 ft. Anne Abel

Episode 210 ft. Anne Abel

Anne Abel joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her experiences winning the Moth StorySLAM, what she learned from the storytelling community, the lifelong toll of her parents’ abuse and her chronic, recurrent depression, overcoming self-loathing, how Bruce...

Episode 209 ft. Heather Sweeney

Episode 209 ft. Heather Sweeney

Heather Sweeney joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her quest to find out who she was apart from her life as a military wife, mining 20 years worth of journals, uncovering internal dynamics through writing, knowing where to begin a memoir, managing...

Episode 208 ft. Kelly Foster Lundquist

Episode 208 ft. Kelly Foster Lundquist

Kelly Foster Lundquist joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about falling in love with creative nonfiction, believing our story is worth sharing, contemplating how to tell it without hurting someone else, shifting from writing academically to personally, taking...

Episode 207 ft. Shigeko Ito

Episode 207 ft. Shigeko Ito

Shigeko Ito joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the lasting impact of childhood emotional neglect, how invisible trauma can manifest in adult life, fragmented memories, facing a fierce inner critic, accepting limits, growing as a person and as a writer,...

Episode 206 ft. Leslie Johansen Nack

Episode 206 ft. Leslie Johansen Nack

Leslie Johansen Nack joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up with parents who struggled with mental illness and substance abuse, surviving an inappropriate and domineering father, getting tools to heal, making ourselves safe, knowing as a child you...

Episode 205 ft. Sue William Silverman

Episode 205 ft. Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about evolving as a writer and bringing freshness to the same subject, experimenting with truncated and fractured forms, making a collection more cohesive, writing to feel centered, utilizing a recurring...

Episode 204 ft. Ren Cedar Fuller

Episode 204 ft. Ren Cedar Fuller

Ren Cedar Fuller joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how when we love people we want their world to be bigger, raising a transgender child, having a disability, writing a lot of drafts for the right structure to snap into place, revising for months, not...

Episode 203 ft. Gina Tron

Episode 203 ft. Gina Tron

Gina Tron joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about coming of age in the aftermath of the Columbine massacre, the myth of the bullied school shooter, revenge fantasies, her advocacy work, capturing the 1990s, connecting a personal story through journalism and...

Episode 202 ft. Jocelyn Jane Cox

Episode 202 ft. Jocelyn Jane Cox

Jocelyn Jane Cox joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the challenges and guilt around caretaking, her childhood experience as a competitive figure skater, telling a story in the structure of a day, using the directed “you” in a book, writing about what has...

Episode 201 ft. Gaar Adams

Episode 201 ft. Gaar Adams

Gaar Adams joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about living amongst and depicting queer and migrant communities in the Gulf states, falling in love with Arabic literature and translation, the undeniable parallels between queerness and migration, exploring...

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