Let’s Talk Memoir with Ronit Plank & Guests
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 132 ft. 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,...
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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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Other Episodes
Episode 63 ft. Estelle Erasmus
Estelle Erasmus brings her 30 years of experience to Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about what it takes to break through submission slushpiles, the key to exemplary essays, honing our writer’s voice and giving editors what they need, pitching story vs. topic,...
Episode 62 ft. Lena Lee
Lena Lee joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about unresolved grief and permission to acknowledge our losses, sibling relationships over time, how memoir can bring us closer to loved ones, emotional distance in our narratives, taking care of ourselves when...
Episode 61 ft. Martina Clark
Martina Clark joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her personal journey with HIV, the toll shame can take, the difference each of us can make, writing a braided memoir, staying a step ahead of the reader, keeping the material that matters, and her memoir...
Episode 60 ft. Priscilla Gilman
Priscilla Gilman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about parentification and hypervigilance in children, toggling between the child character and adult narrator, confronting and capturing the complexity of parents on the page, negotiating our inner critic,...
Episode 59 ft. Laura Carney
Laura Carney joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pluck, endurance, and being the biggest advocate for your book, writing about unresolved grief, what to do to reclaim memory, the truth about marketing your memoir including pitching early, befriending...
Episode 58 ft. Leslie Ferguson
Leslie Ferguson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about surviving childhood trauma and her mother’s psychosis, approaching her manuscript through an editorial lens, the toll of insecure attachment, how writing the story that forged her helped her shed some of...
Episode 57 ft. Adiba Nelson
Adiba Nelson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about putting humor in our work, the importance of voice, not worrying what people think, writing about mother-daughter relationships, raising teenagers, when you feel like you have nothing left, emotional labor...
Episode 56 ft. Jennifer Lang
Jennifer Lang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about compressing prose and chopping manuscripts, leaning into the experimental and remembering to play on the page, distilling material, staying nimble-minded, her husband and her becoming characters on the...
Episode 55 ft. Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies
The Witches of Pitches are Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies here to share their advice about slowing scenes down, remembering that dialogue gives your memoir depth and flavor, finding the other story in your story, creative querying, what building a platform can...
Episode 54 ft. Jill Christman
Jill Christman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how our deepest stories can save our lives, approaching trauma-writing as a process of discovery, practical tips for working on difficult material, allowing ourselves as much time as our essays need,...
Episode 52 ft. Brittany Means
Brittany Means joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up vagrant, writing about child sexual abuse, how she began first with the scenes that haunted her, depicting traumatic material with complexity and compassion, leaning into her narrative voice,...
Episode 51 ft. LL Kirchner
LL Kirchner joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about compressing material and managing timelines, writing about addiction and recovery, radical compassion, polyamory, yoga scandals and sex cults, and her new memoir Blissful Thinking. YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 50 ft. Heather Lanier
Heather Lanier joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding the psychic distance and narrative voice your memoir needs, writing about our children, defying the tyranny of normal, personal narratives for social change, excavating our own ableism, blogs vs....
Episode 49 ft. Patty Lin
Patty Lin joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her former career in television and how she knew she was done with show business, naming names in memoir manuscripts and legal reviews, mother-daughter narratives, sensory details that put the reader in the...
Episode 48 ft. Clare Frank
Clare Frank joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing a female-career-centered memoir, letting structure dictate content, when an agent really loves your voice but doesn’t think they can sell your book, the lifelong relationship she’s had with fire, and...
Episode 53 ft. Kate Evans
Kate Evans joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being a bit of a wandering writer yet finding the patterns that can emerge from chaos, leaning into momentum while generating work, having her life partner as first reader, her traveling life, the writing...
Episode 47 ft. Dinty W. Moore
Dinty W. Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about his 25 years as Editor-in-Chief of Brevity Magazine, elements that set submissions apart and what rejection really means, landing on a writer’s voice, resisting the urge to explain, allowing ourselves to...
Episode 46 ft. Abigail Thomas
Abigail Thomas joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the importance of curiosity, honesty, and vulnerability in our work, making our own rules on the page, her approach to writing and revision, the story she wasn’t sure how she’d tell, and her newest memoir...