Teaching & Speaking
I speak about & teach workshops on writing, podcasting, interview techniques, & building relationships.
Class/Workshop Descriptions:
Scenes That Work: Choosing What Stays in Your Memoir & What Goes
Memoir is not just about what happened but about what you make of what happened. In this class we will work with tools to help you make decisions about which scenes to cut and which to keep to amplify the stakes, tension, and resonance in your memoir.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 1 hour workshop, 3-4 hour class hours
Who Am “I”: Character, Narrator, and Finding Your Memoir’s Voice
One of the most challenging elements of memoir writing can be capturing the voice our narrative needs. In this class we will take a close look at balancing character, narrator, and reflection, and experiment with tools to help calibrate these in your own work to help transform your memoir into an illuminating and emotionally rich journey of self-discovery.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 1 hour workshop, 3-4 hour class hours
The Divided Self in Memoir & Why We Need It
The divisions within us can be a treasure trove of rich material for memoirists to mine. In this class we will explore, experiment with, and incorporate our multi-faceted selves to add specificity, complexity, and stakes to our narratives.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 1 hour workshop, 3-4 hour class hours
You're Not the Hero: Writing with Generosity and Complexity in Memoir
In this class we’ll identify and work with tools that help build multidimensional characters and humanize the characters in your manuscript, raise the stakes in your narrative arc, and breathe new life into your memoir.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 1 hour workshop, 3-4 hour class hours
Broken, Painful, Gone: Depicting Complicated Parental Relationships in Memoir
When we depict the people in our memoirs in multi-faceted ways we add nuance, specificity, and depth to our work. In this session we’ll explore, discuss, and practice tools creative nonfiction writers can employ when writing about even those who have caused them profound pain to tap into reader empathy and deepen the emotional arcs in their manuscripts.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 1 hour workshop, 3-4 hour class hours
Putting the Plot in Your Memoir: Four Tools to Strengthen Tension, Stakes, and Momentum in Your Manuscript
The heartbeat of a memoir is a mind at work trying to make sense of what we’ve experienced, why it still gnaws at us, and what we might do about it. In this course we’ll explore the nature of plot in memoir, how to know whether you have one, tools to help eliminate baggy parts of your work in progress, and four key elements memoirists can harness to amplify tension and stakes in their manuscripts so they crackle with resonance and momentum.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 3-4 class hours
Your Dynamic Memoir
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration
Options: 4 sessions, 2 hours each = 8 class hours
Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story
In this course we will explore how memoir writing can be an act of empowerment and self-discovery; a chance to excavate, reframe, and share what you’ve experienced with fresh clarity and insight. Writing in this genre can be some of the most revelatory, nuanced, and intimate creative work we can do. When we undertake this exploration with curiosity and courage, our stories can become dynamic narratives of growth and change.
You will also read, discuss, and examine work from scores of writers who unfurl their memoirs in dynamic ways including linear, nonlinear, lyric, thematic, and braided approaches. You will have opportunities to contribute to class discussions, generate new material through in-class
prompts, complete workshop assignments, meet with classmates in small breakout groups, create a revision toolkit, and collaborate on memoir reflection
projects.
Format: Formal lesson, group discussion & analysis, writing prompts & exploration, homework, and workshops
Options: 10 weeks online in Spring through the University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education Program
Info and registration here: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story
Speaking:
What Your Memory is Telling You: Understanding and Embracing Your Story
When we tune into what our memory is trying to show us, we can better embrace our own unique journey of self-discovery. In this session we will take a closer look at memory and why how we remember is just as important as what we remember when making sense of our experience. Drawing from her interviews with memoir luminaries including Vivian Gornick and Abigail Thomas and Brain Science podcast host Dr. Virginia Campell, Ronit will share resources and tools to empower and assist you as you excavate your story with curiosity and self-compassion.
Format: 45-minute presentation with 15-minute Q & A
Nurturing Your Writing & Publishing Life
In this session we’ll cover how writers at all stages of their career can create a writing life, build community, and commit to regularly submitting work to literary magazines and mainstream outlets. During our time together you will learn how to:
- embrace both incredibly productive and quieter writing seasons
- keep writing during times you are tempted to stop
- feel connected to creativity even when you’re not writing
- foster a sense of community and connection with fellow writers
- find publications and what they’re looking for
- approach editors and pitch your work
- promote yourself, your writing, and take creative risks
Format: 45-minute presentation with 15-minute Q & A
Compelling Conversations: Strategies for Exceptional Interviews
Successful interviews start long before your guest joins you on your recording platform. In this session we will cover the strategies you can tap into as a host to transform every interview into an intimate and illuminating conversation.
You will learn:
- tools for building a relationship and trust with your guest from your first email
- making guests feel comfortable and at home
- how to set the tone for your conversation
- tips to get your guest to share more personally than they anticipated
- ways to calibrate your interview approach in real time
- corralling a guest back to your questions in gentle ways
- ensuring your guest feels seen and heard
Format: 45-minute presentation with 15-minute Q & A
Podcasting Mistakes I Made & How to Avoid Them
In this session we’ll cover podcasting best practices for organized, efficient, and rewarding podcast hosting and producing with a special section on improving your interviews. Suitable for the seasoned podcaster who wants to streamline their process and newer or about-to-launch podcasters who would like to hone their approach, attendees can expect an action-packed and entertaining hour with slides, anecdotes, case studies, and a Q and A at the end.
Format: 45-minute presentation with 15-minute Q & A
Ronit Plank has been teaching since 2001 and has been a professional writer since 2010. She got her BA from Binghamton University, her MFA in Nonfiction Writing from Pacific University, and she holds 3 writing certificates from the University of Washington in Fiction I, Fiction II, and Nonfiction.
Teaching and Speaking:
Ronit is a memoir instructor with University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education and has been a guest writing lecturer at DePauw University, Seattle Pacific University, Bianca Marais’ (of The Sh*t No One Tells You About Writing) All About Memoir Retreat, Resilient Writers, Write on the Sound, and at other programs domestically and abroad.
She has hosted/produced the podcasts Mouthy, Messy, Mandatory, And Then Everything Changed, The Body Myth, and currently, Let’s Talk Memoir. She has been a guest presenter on podcasting multiple times at She Podcasts Live, Podfest’s 10th Anniversary, for KaSa Media, and elsewhere.
Previously Ronit taught ELL at Yonsei University in Koreatown in Los Angeles, Hebrew reading and writing and Jewish and Holocaust history in Seattle at Temple Beth Am for grades 3-9, and ELL at Seattle World School to middle and high school students.
Writing and Awards
Ronit’s writing has been published in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, HuffPost, Poets & Writers, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, Tablet, and elsewhere. She is the nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and her stories and essays have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology.
She is author of When She Comes Back, a memoir about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation which Book Riot named a Best True Crime Book of 2021. When She Comes Back was a Finalist in the Housatonic Awards, Book of the Year Awards, and National Indie Exellence Awards among others. Her second book, the short story collection Home is a Made-Up Place won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the Page Turner Award for Fiction.
Her short fiction and creative nonfiction have earned spots in The Rumpus Top 20, Narrative Magazine’s Short Story contest (Finalist), The Iowa Review Award for Fiction (runner up), the American Literary Review Award (runner up), and the Hunger Mountain Creative Nonfiction Prize (Special Mention).
Her weekly podcast Let’s Talk Memoir features interviews with memoirists and writing teachers about craft, the creative process, and the writing life and is available on Apple, Spotify, and on this website.