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 161 ft. Megan Williams
Megan Williams joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being a new mother while training at the police academy, looking for validation, resisting the urge to punish ourselves, pushing back against the voice of patriarchal culture, writing to our past self,...
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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 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...
Let’s Talk Memoir Season 3 Is Coming!
Season 3 is almost here with fresh interviews on voice, finding structures that work, revision tools, the ethics and legalities of writing about others, what it’s like to move from other creative disciplines to memoir, advocating for our work, and lots more. Season 3...
“Let’s Talk” Memoir with Allison K. Williams – TRANSCRIPT
SPEAKERS: Ronit Plank, Allison K. Williams [01:13] Ronit Plank: Welcome, Allison. Allison K. Williams: Hi, Ronit. I am so psyched to be here. Ronit Plank: I’m so happy to have you here. And I’m so happy that you’re happy to be here. I just–I’ve been following your...
Episode 45: Season 2 Is Wrapped!
In this episode of Let’s Talk Memoir, reflections on a few most-asked memoir questions, information on Season 3, and where to find Let’s Talk Memoir writing resources and updates while the show is on Summer hiatus. Thank you to Season 2’s generous guests for your...
Episode 44 ft. Reed Harkness
Reed Harkness joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about a mother who goes missing, intergenerational trauma, moving into discomfort in service of truth-telling, what’s ours to tell, masculinity and brotherhood, the hero’s journey as a template for story arc,...
Episode 43 ft. Gayle Brandeis
Gayle Brandeis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her mother to suicide and finding a way to write about it, her work across genres, leaning into what makes us unique on the page, trusting ourselves to discover what our work wants to become, why...