All Episodes
Let’s Talk Memoir — 265 episodes
259. Going Back to Rescue the Past featuring Deborah Derrickson Kossmann
258. Playing with Writing Constraints and Form featuring Deborah Sosin
257. Unburdening Ourselves From Decades of Shame featuring Kim Murphy
256. The Catharsis of Memoir: From Resentment to Understanding featuring Jason Allen
255. The Relief That Comes From Sharing the Toughest Thing featuring Dr. Kara Zivin
254. Writing the Hard Stuff featuring Nicole Walker
253. Getting to the Story Beneath the Story featuring D/Annie Liontas
252. Pulling Readers Inside Our Experience with Specificity and Particularity featuring Rachel Weaver
251. Mining Opening Pages for Impact featuring Deborah K. Shepherd
250. Leaning into Bursts of Memory featuring Samina Najmi
249. Utilizing Core Principles of Storytelling in Memoir featuring Jenny Lisk
248. Forgiving Our Younger Selves featuring Courtney Kocak
247. Turning Down the Volume on Critical Self-Talk featuring Carol Odell
246. Investigating the Many Selves Within the Self featuring Cinelle Barnes
245. Avoiding the Need to Make Memoir Prescriptive featuring Amil Niazi
244. The Project of Looking at Ourselves Honestly featuring Melissa Febos
243. Moving Toward a Deeper Empathy and Understanding: Jill Christman interviews Ronit Plank
242. Writing Memoir as an Act of Resistance featuring Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez
241. Waking Up to How Our History Has Controlled Us featuring Dr. Craig Yorke
Season 8 Announcement
240. Deepening the Narrative Journey and Allowing Ourselves to Go Places We Didn’t Plan featuring Monica Macansantos
239. Letting Our Inner Selves Be Cared For featuring Jacque Gorelick
238. Being Clear on Why We’re Showing Up to Tell This Story Now featuring Jill Christman
237. Creating Immediacy in Our Narratives Through Contained Timeframes and Present Tense featuring Mimi Nichter
236. Listening to Our Own Language and Going Where We Need to Go featuring Rachel Tzvia Back
235. Searching for a Universal Truth in Your Memoir featuring Julie Scolnik
234. Knowing When a Structure has Clicked in Place featuring Stephanie Weaver
233. Revealing the Divisions and Truths Within Us featuring Nikkya Hargrove
232. Self-Compassion and Recognizing the Illusion of Control featuring Amanda McCracken
231. Recovering and Reclaiming the Teenage Version of Ourselves in Memoir featuring Wendy C. Ortiz
230. Leaning into the Most Authentic Version of Our Story featuring Mallary Tenore Tarpley
229. Becoming Someone Else featuring Karen Palmer
228. Bringing the Reader into Our Discovery Process featuring Dorothy Roberts
227. Crafting a Shared Memoir featuring Rebecca N. Thompson, MD
226. Homing in on Why We Need to Tell Our Story featuring Blair Glaser
225. Writing Closer to the Bone featuring Bee Wilson
224. Writing About Chasing an Unconventional Life and Feeling Haunted featuring Alex Poppe
223. Creating the Life That We Want to Live Inside with Words featuring Louise Southerden
222. Unpacking the Scripts We’ve Been Handed featuring Anna Rollins
221. Writing and Processing Old, Longstanding Anger featuring Steve Eichenblatt
220. How to Be Unmothered: Escaping Enmeshment, Going No Contact, and Cocooning Ourselves featuring Camille U. Adams
219. Revealing More Than We Intended featuring Lora Arbrador
218. Honoring Our Own Momentum featuring Gretchen McGowan
217. Writing Real Sex in Memoir featuring Sarah Gallucci
216. Multidisciplinary Approaches to Memoir and Consuming Art in All Its Forms featuring Elizabeth Rynecki and Tony Kaplan
215. Getting to the Heart of Spiritual and Awakened Memoir featuring Sarah Chauncey
214. Dismantling Tropes and the Feeling of Being Other featuring Kaila Yu
213. Who We Are After Mother Loss featuring Tamara Jong
212. Setting Your Writing Apart: A Conversation with Four Editors - Diane Gottlieb, Jennifer Fliss, Nina B. Lichtenstein, and Ronit Plank on Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage
211. Writing About Ourselves and Others with Nuance and Complexity featuring Edgar Gomez
210. Why It’s Never Too Late to Move Forward featuring Anne Abel
209. Reclaiming Identity and Trusting Our Own Process featuring Heather Sweeney
208. Leaning into and Trusting the Particularity of Our Story featuring Kelly Foster Lundquist
207. Growing as a Person and as a Writer featuring Shigeko Ito
206. Changing the Culture of Abuse and Family Dysfunction Through Memoir featuring Leslie Johansen Nack
205. Pushing Boundaries and Experimenting with the Flash Form featuring Sue William Silverman
204. Trusting the Right Structure Will Snap Into Place featuring Ren Cedar Fuller
203. Confronting the Dark and Embarrassing and Giving Ourselves Grace featuring Gina Tron
202. Mining Metaphor and Exploring Divisions within Ourselves featuring Jocelyn Jane Cox
201. Cultivating Interiority and Combating Self-Censorship featuring Gaar Adams
200. Resurrecting the Child You Once Were and the Mother You Had to Let Go featuring Bridey Thelen-Heidel
199. Being Gentler with Ourselves Throughout the Creative Process featuring Sarah Boon
198. Discovering and Believing in Our Own Voice featuring Michael Jamin
197. Making Meaning from Our Own Life featuring Melissa Fraterrigo
196. Structuring a Memoir Around a Medical Mystery featuring Gail Eisnitz
195. Incorporating Magic and the Occult in Memoir featuring Alex DiFrancesco
194. The Body As Writing Portal featuring Nina B. Lichtenstein
193. When Art is How We Survive featuring Sonita Alizada
192. Portraying Complicated Love For a Parent featuring Maura Casey
191. Memoir as a Time Capsule featuring Linda Trinh
190. The Most Honest, Brave, and True Thing You Can Say featuring Amber Rae
189. Trusting our Intuition and Staying True to Our Vision featuring Amy Mackin
188. Reckoning with and Writing About Being Raised by Parents with Mental Illness featuring Natasha Williams
187. Forgiving Ourselves, Forgiving Others featuring Ed Latimore
186. Broadening a Memoir’s Scale, Accessibility, and Audience featuring Mallory McDuff
185. Searching Hard for Self featuring Katy Grabel
184. Writing About Childhood Sexual Abuse without Reliving It featuring Dr. Stacey Hettes
183. Becoming the Hero of Our Own Story featuring Deb Miller
182. Rewriting a Story About Medical Trauma featuring Kate Gies
181. Proof of Life featuring Jennifer Pastiloff
180. Making Peace with a Past You Can’t Change featuring Niko Stratis
179. Taking Risks with Genre and Form featuring Erica Stern
178. Fragmented Forms, the Speculative, and Resisting Restriction featuring Marty Ross-Dolen
177. The Loss of a Lifetime featuring Alyson Shelton and Lynn Shattuck
176. Using the Tools of Fiction to Move Readers featuring Maureen Stanton
175. Book Promotion 101 Bonus Episode: A Conversation with Leah Paulos of Press Shop PR
174. Hybrid Memoir as a Means to Sift Through Experience and Mitigate Shame featuring Jill Damatac
173. Paying Attention to Our Deepest Desires and Illuminating What We Need to featuring Ruthie Ackerman
172. Doing the Unfinished Business of Raising Ourselves featuring Daria Burke
171. When Writing Constraints Liberate Our Work featuring Tom McAllister
170. Reverse Outlining for Emotional Resonance and Hammering Out a Narrative Arc featuring Bonny Reichert
169. Boat Baby featuring Vicky Nguyen
168. Resisting Erasure and Crystallizing Our Lived Experience Through Memoir featuring KB Brookins
167. Keeping the Reader in Mind and Protecting Ourselves When Writing About Pain featuring Michelle Yang
166. What’s Ours to Tell featuring Julie Brill
165. Writing About Disability on a Granular Level featuring Margaret Anne Mary Moore
164. A Memoir with Reflection and Prompts featuring Diana Raab
163. Losing Mothers and Finding Them Again Through Memoir featuring Rebe Huntman
162. Finding Patterns and Switching Lenses featuring Bridgett M. Davis
161. Writing to Our Past Self featuring Megan Williams
160. Falling Outside the Containers of What’s Expected featuring Paul Lisicky
159. Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life featuring Maggie Smith
158. Writing About a Past Where You Weren’t Present featuring Karen Kirsten
157. The Boundaries and Distance We Need to Tell Certain Stories featuring Paula Delgado-Kling
156. Taking Power Back with the Stories We Are Called to Tell featuring Diane Vonglis Parnell
155. Grappling with Contradictions and Leaving Readers Room to Decide featuring Martha S. Jones
154. Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: a Memoir in Essays featuring Nicole Graev Lipson
153. How We Are Haunted featuring Sarah Jaffe
152. Grief Journeys and Storytelling as Closure featuring Susan Lieu
151. Putting the Less Than Heroic Parts of Ourselves on the Page featuring Casey Mulligan Walsh
150. Writing a Memoir in Three Months featuring Barrie Miskin
149. Writing Someone Else’s Story featuring Kanya D’Almeida
148. Shedding False Identities and Being Our Own Best Champion featuring Sari Botton
147. Writing About Your Neurodiverse (ex)Partner featuring Eleanor Vincent
146. Permission to Be Ourselves featuring Minelle Mahtani
145. Limitation as an Engine for Creativity featuring Jarod K. Anderson
144. Theme as Blueprint for Structure featuring Sarah Gormley
143. Attention, Selectivity, and Deep Curiosity featuring Paula Whyman
142. So Woven It’s Whole: Complexly Braiding Science and Memoir featuring Eiren Caffall
141. Tapping Into Our Bodies and Our Subconscious featuring Nadia Colburn
140. A Love-Hate Social Media and Publishing Relationship featuring Kristen Van Nest
139. Stepping Outside the Box featuring Jennifer Lang
138. Pivoting from the Scholarly to the Very Personal featuring Anne Cheng
Season Announcement and More!
137. The Burden of Family Secrets featuring David Tereshchuk
136. The Wise Narrator on the Page featuring Rachel Zimmerman
135. Reckoning with What We Need to Write and Learning to Stop Punishing Ourselves featuring Sarah LaBrie
134. In Service of Your Story featuring Steve Hoffman
133. Breaking Through Internal Barricades and Going Deep featuring Seth Lorinczi
132. Writing Lyrically About the Perceptual Richness of Altered Sight featuring Naomi Cohn
131. Legitimizing Our Own Experience Through Memoir featuring Anne Pinkerton
130. Writing Memoir As a Mother-Daughter Team featuring Dorothy and Rachel Leland
129. Staying True to Our Creative Vision featuring Gina Troisi
128. Deep Memoir featuring Jennifer Selig
127. Re-Archiving Traumatic Memories Through Memoir to Help Forget in Healthy Ways featuring Jay Baron Nicorvo
126. Writing with a Sense of Exploration and Curiosity featuring Lilly Dancyger
125. The Many Different Versions of Ourselves on the Page featuring Brooke Champagne
124. Excavating a Sister’s Story featuring Deborah Kasdan
123. Balancing the Child and Adult Voice featuring Katya Cengel
122. Uncovering a Lost Family History featuring Margaret Juhae Lee
121. Allowing Scenes and Dialogue to Do The Work featuring Becky Ellis
120. What Remains Unsolved In Us featuring Jaclyn Moyer
119. Leaning into Honesty, the Darkly Funny, and the Jewish featuring Gila Pfeffer
118. Memoir Manifestos and Taking Back Our Power featuring Jessica Buchanan
117. Inviting Readers Into Our Most Intimate Spaces featuring Myra Sack
116. Going Viral and Going to Auction featuring Geraldine DeRuiter
115. Dismantling the Fear About Sharing Our Stories featuring Jo-Ann Finkelstein, PhD
114. Thinking Like an Editor, Meaty Bylines, and Mitzvahs featuring Susan Shapiro
113. The Forgiveness Tour featuring Susan Shapiro
112. Deep Love, Deep Honesty featuring Lola Milholland
111. Making, Loving, and Losing Family featuring Jessica Fein
110. Coming to Grips with Vulnerability on the Page featuring Danielle M. Bryan
109. A Well-Trained Wife: My Escape from Christian Patriarchy featuring Tia Levings
108. Paying Attention to What Intrudes on Us and Confronting Ghosts featuring Sonya Huber
107. Writing Complicated Mother-Daughter Relationships featuring Hyeseung Song
106. Recording and Producing Your Audiobook featuring Justin Billmeier
105. The Toxicity of Shame featuring Meg Kissinger
104. What We Can’t Shake featuring Joseph Lezza
103. Overcoming Imposter Syndrome featuring Deesha Dyer
102. Honoring Our Stories and Authentic Selves featuring Melanie Brooks
101. The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Grief featuring Lisa Keefauver
100. Holding Space to Write the Truth of Our Lives featuring Linda Joy Myers
99. Reclaiming Our Voice, Story, and Agency featuring Hannah Sward
98. The Immersive, Lyric Memoir and Becoming Unstuck from Shame featuring Anne Gudger
97. A Conversation with Nonfiction Director at Ballantine Books Sara Weiss
96. Memoir Through A Mythic Lens featuring Maureen Murdock
95. The Gift of a Late Diagnosis and a Life of Service featuring Vickie Rubin
94. Truth Is the Arrow, Mercy Is the Bow featuring Steve Almond
93. The Situation and the Story featuring Ms. Vivian Gornick
92. Protecting Ourselves When Writing About Others featuring Cait West
91. The Arc of Reflection and The Arc of Action featuring Sue William Silverman
90. Allowing Ourselves to Be Seen featuring Kathleen Dorothy Blackburn
89. The Shame Around Shame and Unshrinking: How to Face Fatphobia featuring Kate Manne
88. Digging to Find a Deeper Story featuring Suzette Mullen
87. Trusting Your Readers, Trusting Yourself featuring Mimi Zieman
86. Season 4 is here! Writing About Trauma Without Retraumatizing Ourselves featuring Lisa Cooper Ellison
85. Having Roots and Losing Them: Writing About the Crisis in Venezuela Through Memoir featuring Paula Ramón
84. Guilt, Infertility, and Documenting Reproductive Rights in Memoir featuring Ellen Weir Casey
83. The Vulnerability of Writing About Difficult Motherhoods featuring Karen DeBonis
82. Loving and Writing About an Imperfect, Magnificent Child featuring Cathy Shields
81. Self-Declared Spiritual Gurus, Secret Mantras, and Yoga Cults featuring Joelle Tamraz
80. Realizing You’ve Actually Been Writing Your Book featuring Rona Maynard
79. Understanding How to Let Go featuring Ann Batchelder
78. The Very Good News About Publishing featuring Brooke Warner
77. Following Creative Hunches and the Magic of Revision featuring Joni B. Cole
76. How to Capture a Feeling: the Specific and Particular featuring Jane Wong
75. Working with Developmental Editors and Book and Proposal Coaches featuring Lisa Niver
74. Depicting Complex Relationships and Calibrating Metaphor in Memoir featuring Rosa Lowinger
73. Putting Child Loss into Words featuring Eileen Vorbach Collins
72. The Leaving Season featuring Kelly McMasters
71. Memoir on Stage featuring Jamie Brickhouse
70. Saying Goodbye and Why We Write About the Hard Things featuring Morgan Baker
69. Complicated Family Legacies and Heaps of Material featuring Gretchen Cherington
68. Building Bylines, Crafting Book Proposals, and Pursuing Editors featuring Dina Gachman
67. The Stories Landscapes Hold and the Presence of Absence featuring Pamela Petro
Dear Let’s Talk Memoir listeners,
66. Embracing our Writing Seasons featuring Victoria Buitron
65. Authenticity, Recovery, and Advocating for Survivors in Memoir featuring Maya Golden
64. Memoir in Present Tense and Reprocessing Our Lives Through Writing featuring Sherry Sidoti
63. Writing That Gets Noticed featuring Estelle Erasmus
62. When Memoir Brings Loved Ones Closer featuring Lena Lee
61. A Diagnosis, the Toll of Shame, and a Life of Service featuring Martina Clark
60. Confronting and Capturing the Complexity of Our Parents on the Page featuring Priscilla Gilman
59. Marketing Your Memoir, Preparing for Book Launch, & Going Viral featuring Laura Carney
58. Choosing The Scenes That Stay featuring Leslie Ferguson
57. Writing About Mother-Daughter Relationships featuring Adiba Nelson
56. Memoir in Miniature featuring Jennifer Lang
55. The Witches of Pitches on Building Platform, Creative Querying, and Stalking Editors featuring Aileen Weintraub and Megan Margulies
54. The Truest Story You Can Tell featuring Jill Christman
53. Trusting Patterns Will Emerge featuring Kate Evans
52. Approaching Traumatic Material with Complexity and Compassion featuring Brittany Means
51. Compressing Material and Managing Timelines featuring LL Kirchner
50. Discovering the Narrative Voice Your Memoir Needs featuring Heather Lanier
49. Creating a Writing Life on Our Own Terms featuring Patty Lin
48. Writing into Structure featuring Clare Frank
47. Relentless in Revision featuring Dinty W. Moore
46. Still Life at Eighty featuring Abigail Thomas
Season 3 is launching soon!
Season 2 is Wrapped!
44. Intergenerational Trauma & Truth-Telling in Sam Now featuring Reed Harkness
43. Trusting Our Writing Selves featuring Gayle Brandeis
42. The Deeply Researched Memoir featuring Jennifer Lunden
41. Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden featuring Camille T. Dungy
40. The Spiritual Memoir featuring Sarah Birnbach
39. Processing Grief with Words featuring Candace Cahill
38. You Could Make This Place Beautiful featuring Maggie Smith
37. Sharing A Dangerous Story featuring Erika Bornman
36. Writing What You Have To featuring Sandi Wisenberg
35. From Blog to Book featuring Stacey Freeman
34. Excavating Cultural Identity in Memoir featuring Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson
33. Finding the Themes in Your Story featuring Debbie Weiss
32. The Intersection of Race, Privilege, and Addiction in Memoir featuring Laura Cathcart Robbins
31. Language, Lyricism, and Sound featuring Suzanne Roberts
30. The Magic of Dialogue featuring Felicia Thai Heath
29. Co-Authoring a Memoir featuring Vincent Paterson and Amy Tofte
28. Resisting Self-Pity in Memoir featuring Maria Giura
27. Protecting What We Create From Our Own Judgment featuring Buick Audra
26. Memoir in Essays and Experimental Forms featuring Beth Kephart
25. Discovering the Story You Need to Tell featuring Lori L. Tharps
24. The Editor We All Need featuring Allison K. Williams
23. The Acceptance of Imperfection featuring Kathy Curto
22. Writing a Memoir About The Mother Who Betrayed You featuring Author Laura Davis
21. Inside Passage: The Waterfield Sisters on Their Fractured Childhood and the Redemptive Power of Memoir and Music featuring Keema Waterfield and Tekla Waterfield
20. No Job for a Man featuring John Ross Bowie
19. Writing About Family Secrets featuring Isidra Mencos
18. Crafting a Braided Memoir featuring Jamie Gehring
17. The Role of the Reflective Narrator featuring Lily Dunn
16. Voice First featuring Sonya Huber
Season 2 launching soon!
15. Memory, Truth, and Memoir featuring Dr. Virginia Campbell
14. The Divided Self in Memoir featuring Phillip Lopate
13. The Case for Generosity in Memoir featuring Judy Bolton-Fasman
12. Making Your Manuscript Shimmer featuring Laura Davis
11. Yes, Your Writing Has Value featuring Paulette Perhach
10. The Merits of Writing About Trauma with Restraint featuring Kelly Sundberg
9. Writing About Our Children featuring Debi Lewis
8. A Conversation with Writing and Publishing Expert Jane Friedman
7. Writing Your Story for Yourself featuring Melissa Gould
6. Not Too Soon, Not Too Much: Stories That Insist on Being Told featuring Meg Weber
5. Doing Whatever it Takes to Get Yourself to Write featuring Andrea Ross
4. Finding the Thread featuring Ellen Blum Barish
3. Putting it All on the Page: The Good, the Bad, and the Heartwrenching featuring Christie Tate
2. The Transformation of Trauma featuring Jeannine Ouellette
1. Who Am ”I”?--Character vs. Narrator featuring Debra Gwartney
Trailer: Let’s Talk Memoir