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 243: Jill Christman interviews Ronit Plank

Episode 243: Jill Christman interviews Ronit Plank

In celebration of the launch of season 8, Jill Christman joins Let’s Talk Memoir to interview Ronit about growing up with no blueprint for making a relationship work, fending for ourselves in childhood, being driven by curiosity, writing about others with generosity...

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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 106 ft. Justin Billmeier

Episode 106 ft. Justin Billmeier

Justin Billmeier joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about his experience directing and producing audiobooks for a major publishing house, recording equipment costs and considerations for the indie memoirist, audiobook coaching and guidance, and the many...

Episode 105 ft. Meg Kissinger

Episode 105 ft. Meg Kissinger

Meg Kissinger joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing two siblings to suicide, using her skills as a journalist on her own family, America’s failed mental health system, stripping away prejudice about people with mental illness, the toxicity of shame,...

Episode 104 ft. Joseph Lezza

Episode 104 ft. Joseph Lezza

Joseph Lezza joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing loved ones, panic disorder and the stigma around anxiety, anger, shame, and the grieving process, discovering the genre he needed while at an MFA program, lyric essay, how story dictates form, what...

Episode 103 ft. Deesha Dyer

Episode 103 ft. Deesha Dyer

Deesha Dyer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her rise in the Obama White House and how imposter syndrome followed her up the ranks, tone policing and microaggressions, how her identity as a Black woman was weaponized in the workplace, engaging her...

Episode 102 ft. Melanie Brooks

Episode 102 ft. Melanie Brooks

Melanie Brooks joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the misinformation and fear around HIV/AIDS in the 1980s, the role of the evangelical church in her family’s history, the emotional toll of keeping secrets, her work in the growing field of narrative...

Episode 101 ft. Lisa Keefauver

Episode 101 ft. 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...

Episode 100 ft. Linda Joy Myers

Episode 100 ft. 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...

Episode 99 ft. Hannah Sward

Episode 99 ft. 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...

Episode 98 ft. Anne Gudger

Episode 98 ft. 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...

Episode 97 ft. Sara Weiss

Episode 97 ft. Sara Weiss

Sarah 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...

Episode 96 ft. Maureen Murdock

Episode 96 ft. 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...

Episode 95 ft. Vickie Rubin

Episode 95 ft. 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...

Episode 94 ft. Steve Almond

Episode 94 ft. 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...

Episode 93 ft. Vivian Gornick

Episode 93 ft. 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,...

Episode 92 ft. Cait West

Episode 92 ft. 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...

Episode 91 ft. Sue William Silverman

Episode 91 ft. Sue William Silverman

Sue William Silverman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about claiming our stories, creative nonfiction as an act of affirmation and courage, tapping into artistic masks, discovering answers along the way, the aware and the unaware voice, writing...

Episode 90 ft. Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn

Episode 90 ft. Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn

Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about listening to and putting our younger selves on the page, recognizing family codes we can no longer adhere to, place as a character in memoir, writing like nobody will ever see our work, how...

Episode 89 ft. Kate Manne

Episode 89 ft. Kate Manne

Kate Manne joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about coming of age in fatphobic culture, disentangling the threads of weight, health, and diet culture, the racism at the root of anti-fatness, writing ourselves out and then back into our work, the psycho-social...

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