258. Playing with Writing Constraints and Form featuring Deborah Sosin

Deborah Sosin joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing 70 micro memoirs of 70 words each to mark her 70th birthday, her love of compression and concision, working in themes, sitting with the memory of a scene and understanding its emotional truth, being clear on your quest as a memoirist, growing up in an overly close knit family, emotional and physical intrusion, forging a separate self, having no desire to write a memoir about her family, playing with constraints and form, feeling freedom to break the rules, and her new memoir Escape Velocity: How One 70-Year-Old Push-Pulled Her Way Out of Her Too-Much-Not-Enough Family.    Also in this episode: -distilling a scene  -working in themes -the push-pull of the writing process    Books mentioned in this episode: Place Envy: Essays in Search of Orientation  by Michael Lowenthal The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas Three Dog Life  by Abigail Thomas What Comes Next and How to Like It  by Abigail Thomas  Still Life at Eighty by Abigail Thomas Heating and Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly The Irish Goodbye by Beth Ann Fennelly Allegiance by Darien Hsu Gee   Deborah Sosin is a writer, editor, psychotherapist, and GrubStreet instructor. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe Magazine, Salon, Cognoscenti, Brevity Blog, Oldster Magazine, Short Reads, The Manifest-Station, two anthologies, and numerous other publications. She is a reader for In Short: A Journal of Flash Nonfiction. Debbie is the author of Escape Velocity: How One 70-Year-Old Push-Pulled Her Way Out Her Too-Much-Not-Enough Family (70 Micro-Memoirs, 70 Words Each). She also authored the picture book Charlotte and the Quiet Place, which won a Gold INDIEFAB and Silver IPPY award; and a clinical workbook, Sober Starting Today. Debbie has an MFA from Lesley University and an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. She lives outside of Boston. More at: www.deborahsosin.com and Write It Like It Is Substack.   Connect with Deborah: Write It Like It Is Substack: https://deborahs27.substack.com/ Website: www.deborahsosin.com    Purchase book directly:  https://shop.ingramspark.com/b/084?params=RyWUrsfZlvtY9WuizGbq9ER8EtLO1eq9Kx4SC4T0pGE   Darien Gee’s Substack: https://substack.com/@dariengee – 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