Memoir Nation

This week’s episode is a timely one—an interview with Jose Antonio Vargas, who outed himself as an undocumented immigrant when he started his nonprofit, Define American. His memoir is Dear America, which was updated last year to include new material for living in Trump’s America. In this interview, Jose shares his experiences with ICE and being undocumented in this country, as well as his insights...

Memoir Nation is ringing in the new year with some of our greatest hits. We’ve gone into the archives and chosen a clip from a handful of our favorite guests over the years. Listening to each of these memoirists speak about memoir, writing, and the gifts and challenges of the genre is so inspiring—and we hope this hour of insight will be some fuel for your own writing tank. We’re in the first week...

JanYourStory is starting this week! And since this show falls at the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Grant and Brooke are picking up from where they left off last week (how to start) to focus on how to keep going. Questions of fear and readiness (or lack thereof) are addressed, but the primary message of this week’s show is that if you say you want to write a memoir, you can and you will. T...

This week we’re in full prep mode to write write write in January for our JanYourStory writing challenge. With that in mind, Brooke and and Grant tackle beginnings. How to start isn’t limited to how to get started. Starting involves starting to write each day, and how to start thinking about writing, and ways to start a memoir. We talk about all this and more, with an eye on the new year and throw...

This week’s interview with the cofounders of SheWrites.com, Kamy Wicoff and Deborah Siegel-Acevedo, is especially touching for Brooke because these two women are where it all started. This week’s interview is about why community matters as told through the histories and sensibilities of two community champions who started something that lit the literary world on fire in 2009. SheWrites back then w...

This month we’re doing a series to get our listeners in the mindset to write! Once you have a goal and a deadline (last week’s show), the next hurdle you will invariably face is time—lack thereof or mismanagement or both. Don’t worry, this week’s guest, Laura Vanderkam, has got your back. There are such practical tips and helpful reframes in this episode. If you’re not planning to write with us in...

Through the month of December, Memoir Nation podcast is hosting a series called JanYourStory Prep to get listeners ready and excited to participate in our January writing challenge to write 500 words a day every day in January. Inspired by Grant’s 12 years as Executive Director of NaNoWriMo, JanYourStory is for memoirists, but anyone can join this free challenge. Instead of writing 60K words in No...

This week’s Memoir Nation is an onstage interview with Brooke and guest Susan Orlean, author of the new memoir, Joyride . This interview was a LitQuake event that happened in late October in Oakland, California. Susan is a delightful storyteller on the page and on the stage. There are some not-to-be-missed stories about working for Robert Gottlieb and Tina Brown at The New Yorker ; what it felt li...

Memoir Nation guest Beth Macy’s new memoir, Paper Girl , offers us the opportunity to dive into a social-cultural discussion this week as we explore the forces that seek to divide us, and also that seek to prevent pathways out of poverty. This is an important if hard conversation about subjects close to Beth’s book and her life—about the safety nets that are no longer there for the poor; about the...

This week we delve into all the ways memoir can be transformative. In framing her own memoir as an act of service, Julie Lythcott-Haims helps us to contextualize what your memoir is for, who it’s for, and whether you’re ready to write it for others, or if it needs to stay with just you, at least for a while. This is a powerful and impassioned conversation about memoir, why we write, and what we wr...

This week we have a historically important memoirist on the show. E. Jean Carroll risked her privacy and her reputation to charge President Trump with sexual assault. He was convicted for those crimes. E. Jean Carroll is a writer and an author who penned a memoir about being on trial—and how when women are victimized and assaulted, they’re slut-shamed, discredited, and scrutinized. In this intervi...

This week, Memoir Nation connects with comedian Roy Wood Jr. on the serious topic of legacy—what we inherit and what we pass on. Wood’s new memoir, The Man of Many Fathers, explores the many influences in his life, and how a complicated relationship with his own father, including losing him when Wood was just sixteen, informs how he parents his son. This is a touching and heartfelt interview about...

Memoir Nation is celebrating imperfection, unresolved storylines, and the art of positive obsession this week with guest Mallary Tenore Tarpley, author of the new memoir, Slip. This week’s episode has so much good stuff for memoirists—including Mallary’s story of tenacity (she was rejected many many times on her first time out the gate with this book); her pivot to memoir-plus, and her insights on...

This week we’re treated to the deep expertise, wisdom, and compassion of agent Regina Brooks. Regina has lots of experience shaping and selling memoirs to publishers. In this week’s show, we talk about what makes a memoir saleable, but also about what Regina looks for when memoir projects cross her desk. We cover author platform, celebrity memoir, and advice for memoirists looking to get published...

This week’s episode is one that’s full of joy and inspiration and the payoffs of believing in yourself. Guest Kwame Alexander is one of the most upbeat, persistent, and tenacious people in book publishing, and we’re honored that he SAID YES to coming back to Memoir Nation seven years after his first appearance. This week’s show is about the power of yes and where yes can lead you—and we touch upon...

This week we welcome Melissa Febos back to Memoir Nation to discuss her latest book, The Dry Season. Melissa is a fountain of inspiration and information and this episode covers topics as diverse as how to cultivate discernment in our reading to why memoir is the opposite of self-indulgent. We drill down into solitude as a creatively regenerative space, and get into some memoir craft, too. Hard to...

This week we have a fun episode that examines point of view in memoir. We’re talking about personal narrative that falls outside of first person, which means points of view that are second, third, and plural. We consider this style, which used to be far less common in memoir than it is now, with author Elizabeth Crane, whose memoir, This Story Will Change , implements all the points of view to gre...

What a treat to connect with Roxane Gay about memoir. We cover topics of oversharing and boundaries, as well as when memoir becomes manifesto. Today’s show covers vulnerability and writing about shame, and how Roxane’s success and visibility has impacted her writing. Plus, we get Roxane’s take on Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, and why she thinks it’s “not good.” Much worth listening to this week,...

This week we come back to a topic, the mother-daughter relationship, we’ve covered in various ways over the years. Author Jeannie Vanasco has a unique take, however, in that her mother lived with her while she was writing her new book, A Silent Treatment . She shares with us about writing from “within an experience” and why she wrote this book “for” her mother. There are endless nuances to explore...

This week, Memoir Nation podcast turns 8! And we’re kicking off our new season with guest Myriam Gurba, the brilliant if sometimes controversial critic and cultural writer who’s the author of multiple books, including her memoir, Mean , and the forthcoming Poppy State . This week’s podcast is focused on language—word choice, puns, clever language, reading aloud, being in love with language, and so...

This week’s Memoir Nation is the last of our summer best-of round-up episodes. We chose to pair Victoria Chang and Carvell Wallace because these were two of our most heartfelt guests who delved deeply and honestly into some of memoir’s deepest emotions: shame; love; anger; happiness; and more. These interviews were a couple that most touched us for Chang and Wallace’s articulation of process, maki...

In this week’s summer celebration of the best of Write-minded and Memoir Nation, we’re partnering Amanda Knox and Lidia Yuknavitch, both of whom speak compellingly on what it means to reclaim your story. Whether you’ve been victimized in some way, as Knox was; or whether you’re ready to take back a particular story in your life, to cast yourself as the hero or heroine of your own narrative, as Yuk...

This week we continue our August celebration of our favorite interviews and themes—and this week we’re going back to two authors who inspired us so much for their advocacy, their championing of non-mainstream characters, and their commitment to the hard work of speaking truth to power. Both of these heartfelt, brave authors had a lot to say about the kinds of characters they want to see in books,...

This week marks the beginning of our August round-ups where we choose our favorite episodes from the prior year as we gear up for our new season. We’re revisiting two of our personal favorite authors and subjects: craft. Tune into Jane Alison and Jeannine Ouellette to glean insight and inspiration about your writing and the structures, forms, playfulness, and directions it can take when you’re att...

This week, our final episode of our seventh season, features John B. King Jr., who served in President Barack Obama's cabinet as the tenth U.S. Secretary of Education. This is a book about mentors who helped King along the way and how he rose in the ranks of public education to eventually be appointed as Secretary. Brooke and Grant discuss what it means to do what you love, and talk about the diff...