Let’s Talk Memoir

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 metaphorically and sensorily, the arc of reflection and the arc of action, her decades of teaching at the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA progr...

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 shame and pain can manifest as silence, sharing with readers what we may not be able to reveal to loved ones, the contracts we enter a...

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 consequences of fatphobia on our bodies, the shame around shame, organizing our time, writing while mothering a young child, gatheri...

Suzette Mullen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about digging to find a deeper story and the question we need to ask in memoir, discovering where to begin by getting to the end of our manuscripts, the revision process as revelatory, the effect our memoirs have on loved ones, leaning on trusted readers and writers, her work as a nonfiction book coach, and her coming of age and coming out...

Mimi Zieman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about thinking of ourselves as characters, hooking readers from the beginning, playing with structure, balancing our reflective narrator, trusting your reader and not overexplaining, the true self and the invisible self, when to listen to others and when to listen to ourselves, being the only woman on a historic climbing expedition, and her me...

Lisa Cooper Ellison joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about therapy vs. memoir, taking care of our nervous systems while working on charged material, writing about trauma without retraumatizing ourselves, developing a robust self-care practice, how to avoid creating victim narratives in our memoirs, what to do with gaps in our memory, putting more of ourselves on the page, and her new pod...

Paula Ramón joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about pivoting from journalism to memoir to tell the story of Venezuela’s collapse, understanding the history of her country before and after Chavez through her mother’s life, guilt, the physical and emotional losses she and her family have faced, the concept of democracy, when there’s no future in your country, emotional warfare and shrinking...

Ellen Weir Casey joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about infertility and becoming the mother of one of the world’s first IVF babies in the earliest days of assisted reproductive technology, the role guilt plays in women’s lives, being part of medical and women’s history, forgiving ourselves, reproductive freedom, and her memoir Unstoppable: Forging The Path To Motherhood In The Early Days...

Karen DeBonis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the obstacles and medical gaslighting she faced trying to uncover what ailed her son, postpartum depression, writing about difficult motherhoods, learning how to deal with conflict, sharing our pages with partners, promoting our work, a happy social media story, how she overcome her people pleasing ways to become a warrior mom and her...

Cathy Shields joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the role guilt and grief have played in her experience parenting a unique child, how she has navigated her daughter’s diagnosis of severe cognitive disability, writing about complicated mothers and complicated mothering, protecting children in our work, critical mothers, living in the contradiction, and her memoir The Shape of Normal. ...

Joelle Tamraz joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about yoga cults and self-declared spiritual gurus, searching for something outside ourselves, mind control, transcendental meditation, capturing the emotional vulnerability of our memoir characters, the many drafts in our manuscripts, and the story of how she pried her way out of the decades-long spiritual emotional, financial, and physical...

Rona Maynard joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about allowing ourselves to get lost in our writing, realizing you've actually been writing your book, observing our animal companions keenly, embracing surprises in our work, discovering joyful moments, looking for a narrative arc, using Scrivener, going more deeply, writing from the heart, and her memoir Starter Dog.   Also in this episode:...

Ann Batchelder joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about using myth as a jumping point for interpreting ourselves, trusting intuition, the idea of mother failure, regret and letting go, addiction and recovery in loved ones, mental health stigma, deciding when to show loved ones the manuscript, and her memoir Craving Spring: A Mother’s Quest, a Daughter’s Depression, and the Greek Myth that...

Brooke Warner joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about nontraditional publishing, the massive sea change we’re seeing in memoir, how for authors visibility and marketing work is never done, protecting our memoir worlds, accountability groups, what all memoirs require, the genesis of She Writes Press, balancing her multiple roles, the project she is working on now and the many resources she...

Joni B. Cole joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about following our creative hunches, what to look for in workshop groups and writing teachers, the power of positive reinforcement, the magic of revision, the right to tell our stories, her approach to teaching, the writer’s center she founded in White River Junction, Vermont and her new book of essays Party Like It’s 2044: Finding the Funny...

Jane Wong joins Let’s Talk memoir for a conversation about the challenge of reflection in memoir, writing that teems with the specific and particular, capturing the experience of being a chinese american woman on the page, writing about exes and domestic violence, keeping ourselves safe while creating, constellations in our lives, avoiding sentimentality, and her new memoir which she calls a love...

Lisa Niver joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about disagreeing and then agreeing with your agent, her career in travel, accountability groups, working with developmental editors and book and proposal coaches, divorce, all the non-writerly jobs being a published memoirist requires, and her new book Brave-ish: One Breakup, Six Continents and Feeling Fearless After Fifty.   Also in this epis...

Rosa Lowinger joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in Cuba, her storied career in art restoration, taking a closer look at the complicated and evolving relationship she’s had with her mother, sending manuscripts to family and exes before they go to press, protecting loved ones in our work, how much metaphor is too much, and her new memoir Dwell Time.   Also in this episode:...

Eileen Vorbach Collins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her young daughter to suicide and the essays she wrote as she contended with her loss, the role of reflection, change, and growth in memoir, calling yourself a writer, finding your people, choosing what stays in essay collections and what goes, and her memoir Love in the Archives.   Also in this episode: -bad writing gr...

Kelly McMasters joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the elusiveness of “home”, creating space for our children in our art, questions as writing tools, letting go of what we thought our lives would be, falling in love with narcissists, the critical distance necessary to our work, writing about exes, landscape as a foil, and her memoir in essays The Leaving Season.   -Visit the Let's Ta...

Jamie Brickhouse joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing and teaching memoir, performing and telling stories, alcoholism and life as a sober artist, being a 5-time Moth StorySLAM winner, his Texas tornado of a mother, why we don't need good a memory to write a memoir, and his memoir Dangerous When Wet.   -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letsta...

Morgan Baker joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about motherhood and identity, giving back to ourselves and creating boundaries, confronting depression, worrying about our memoir’s structure later, juggling our jobs as writers, why we write about hard things, and her new memoir Emptying the Nest. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir -Take th...

Gretchen Cherington joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about complicated family legacies and processing sexual abuse, confronting the public view of a loved one we’re writing about, protecting manuscripts before we have book contracts, corralling information and organizing heaps of material, reading broadly, building relationships and being above board with sources, and her true crime, inv...

Dina Gachman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about ambiguous loss, taking risks on the page, writing about family, connecting with and pursuing editors, her approach to building bylines and writing book proposals, pushing past our fear of judgment in service of our stories, and her new memoir So Sorry for Your Loss. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/...

Pamela Petro joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the stories landscapes hold, why she resisted memoir and how she ultimately put herself on the page despite trying hard not to, pushing ourselves to keep asking questions, writing a braided memoir and the responsibility of incorporating research, deep time, the presence of absence, and her newest book The Long Field.   -Visit the Let's...