235. Searching for a Universal Truth in Your Memoir featuring Julie Scolnik

Julie Scolnick joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about falling madly in love with a married Frenchman when she was 20 years old and living in Paris studying music, working our way back from aching first love, searching for answers, cutting everything that doesn’t serve the story, finding a universal truth in your memoir, restructuring a manuscript to include letters at the start of each chapter, the decades-long process of getting a book published, maintaining artistic control, writing about music in memoir, deep romance and intense heartbreak, and her memoir Paris Blue: A Memoir of First Love.   Ronit’s in-person Fall Workshop - Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story     https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story   Also in this episode: -searching for an agent -hybrid publishing -believing in your story   Books mentioned in this episode: The Memoir Project by Marion Roach Smith Let’s Take the Long Way Home by Gail Caldwell   Julie Scolnik is a concert flutist and founding artistic director of Mistral Music, a chamber music series that since 1997 has brought her accolades for the high caliber of her artists, her imaginative programming, and the personal rapport she establishes with her audiences. She lives in Boston with her husband, physicist Michael Brower, and their two cats, Daphne and Chloë. They have two adult children, Sophie and Sasha Scolnik-Brower, also musicians. Paris Blue is a story that lingered in her psyche for over forty years, so she is thrilled to finally share it with the world.   Connect with Julie: Website: www.JulieScolnik.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/julie_scolnik Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jscolnik Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/julie_scolnik/   Mistral Music:  https://www.facebook.com/MistralChamberMusic https://www.youtube.com/c/MistralChamberMusic/videos Purchase Book via Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Paris-Blue-Memoir-First-Love/dp/1646634713   – Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, Poets & Writers, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, 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 the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories.  She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and teaches memoir through the University of Washington's Online Continuum Program and also independently. She launched Let's Talk Memoir in 2022, lives in Seattle with her family of people and dogs, and is at work on her next book. More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank   Follow Ronit: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social