All Episodes
Memoir Nation — 270 episodes
Terria Smith on How Our Adventures Shape Us
Captain Nia Gilliam on Monoculture Moments in Memoir
Reyna Grande on Finding Beauty in Your Prison
Andre Dubus III and Marya Hornbacher on The Cost of Telling the Truth
Roxane Gay and Myriam Gurba on Refusing to Be Nice
Jose Antonio Vargas and Beth Macy on Memoir That Changes Culture
Kwame Alexander and E. Jean Carroll on the Power of Staying the Course
Roz Hernandez on the Freedom and Success of Not Being for Everyone
Emily Rapp Black on Writing the Hardest Things
Siri Hustvedt on Grief as Unrequited Love
Roxane Gay and Debbie Millman on the Importance of Indie Media (and Celebrating the Relaunch of “The Rumpus”)
Rosebud Baker on Tragedy + Time = Memoir
Beronda Montgomery on Memoir as Testimony
Ronit Plank on Memoir Advocacy
Eleni Sikelianos on How Subject Shapes Story
Beth Ann Fennelly on The Micro Memoir
Brandon Deyette on Writing in Another Voice
Ruth Reichl on Writing You Can Taste (and it’s our 400th episode!)
Gail Butensky and Grant Faulkner on Telling Stories to Photos
Courtney Kocak on Writing Openly About Sex
Caroline Paul on the Tension Between Obsession and Letting Go
Danielle Bainbridge on Defying the Formula to Find Your Form
Rich Benjamin on Writing a Memoir Centering Events That Transpired Before You Were Born
Alicia Jo Rabins on the Spiritual Memoir
Memoir Showers and Celebrity Pet Memoirs (WTF?)
Rachel Eliza Griffiths on Finding the Poetry in Grief
Janine Kovac on Getting Into Writing Residencies and Book Festivals
Marya Hornbacher on Memoirs That Prevail
Mimi Nichter on Finding the Courage to Tell Your Story
Jordan Carlos on Writing Memoir as a Portal to Self-Betterment
Sarah Aziza on Memoir as a Work of Art
Karen Palmer on Catalyst Moments as Inspiration for Memoir
#ReadingAfrica: A Panel with Sahra Noor, Joanne Bloch, Colleen Higgs, and Patrice Nganang
Andre Dubus III on Responsibility, Exposure, and Harm in Memoir Writing
Suzette Partido on Writing About the Challenges We Face While Holding onto Hope and Possibility
Jose Antonio Vargas on Life in a Country That Says You Don’t Belong
Memoir Nation Greatest Hits, 2018-2025
Grant and Brooke on How to Keep Doing What You Say You Want to Do—and Write and Finish Your Memoir (JanYourStory Prep)
Brooke & Grant on How to Start or Restart Your Memoir (JanYourStory Prep)
Kamy Wicoff and Deborah Siegel-Acevedo on The Power of Community (JanYourStory Prep)
Laura Vanderkam on Making Time to Write (JanYourStory Prep)
Chris Baty on The Magic of a Goal and a Deadline (JanYourStory Prep)
Susan Orlean on Writing the Story of a Life Well Lived
Beth Macy on Writing to Explore Why We’re So Divided
Julie Lythcott-Haims on Writing as an Act of Service
E. Jean Carroll on Untold Stories That Have To Be Told
Roy Wood Jr. on the Legacies We Inherit and Pass On
Mallary Tenore Tarpley on Writing Your Memoir When You’re Still Living the Story
Regina Brooks on the Business of Memoir
Kwame Alexander on Saying Yes!
Melissa Febos on Solitude as Creative Fuel
Elizabeth Crane on Point of View in Memoir
Roxane Gay on Memoir as Manifesto
Jeannie Vanasco on the Mother-Daughter Relationship in Memoir
Myriam Gurba on Packing a Punch with Language
Carvell Wallace and Victoria Chang on Emotions and Memoir
Amanda Knox and Lidia Yuknavitch on Reclaiming
Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lee Wind on Championing Marginalized Characters
Jane Alison and Jeannine Ouellette on Craft and Form
John B. King on The Career Memoir
W. Kamau Bell on Creating Conversations in a Complicated, Comedic World
Jeff Hiller on The Celebrity Memoir
Prabal Gurang on Why No Outside Validation Is Needed
Molly Jong-Fast on Opening a Vein on the Page
Jennifer Croft on How Illustrations and Photos Inform and Enhance Memoir
Sara Kehaulani Goo on Writing as Kuleana
Victoria Chang on Exploring Silence
Elissa Altman on Permission
Vauhini Vara on Where Self Meets Technology
Amanda Knox on Reclaiming Your Story on Your Terms
Nicole Graev Lipson on Self as a Fictional Character
Jill Ciment on What It Means to Reconsider a Memoir?
Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner present: Write-Minded Is Now Memoir Nation
How to Read in Public, featuring Jorah LaFleur
Write What You Know, featuring Betsy Lerner
Brooke & Grant on Miranda July’s All Fours
You’re Going to Have Feelings About Publishing, featuring Kate McKean
Shapeshifting, featuring Lidia Yuknavitch
Writing to Save Your Life, featuring Samina Ali
Hard-Won Wisdom, featuring Sari Botton
The Suburban Novel, featuring Tom Perrotta
Infusing Mystery into Literary Fiction, featuring Jean Kwok
How to Submit, featuring Dennis James Sweeney
Why Scope Matters, featuring Tara Dorabji
Writing Characters Your Readers Will Care About, featuring Sadeqa Johnson
Writing Retreat Roundup, featuring Connie Hale and Ellen Sussman
Creating the Heroes You Want to See in the World, featuring Lee Wind
On the Merits of Not Letting the Past Stay in the Past, featuring Susan Lieu
The Poem As Novel, featuring Forrest Gander
The Counter Revolution to Resolutions Continues, featuring Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner
In Defense of Unsatisfying Endings, featuring Zahid Rafiq
Hybrid Writing for Hybrid Lives, featuring Faith Adiele
Bringing Attention, Playfulness, and Surprise to Your Writing, featuring Jeannine Ouellette
Drug Stories, featuring Emily Witt
Embracing Contradiction, featuring Carvell Wallace
The Art of Listening, featuring Elizabeth Rosner
Centering Marginalized Characters in Your Fiction, featuring Barbara Ridley
How Being Fascinated and Daunted Can Drive Your Writing, featuring Edwidge Danticat
Optimism and Pessimism in Book Publishing—Because It’s Always Both, featuring Michael Castleman
Writing as a Way to Champion People and Causes, featuring Maggie Tokuda-Hall
Don’t Let Your Comfort Zone Become Your Doom Zone, featuring Joshua Mohr
How to Be Compulsively Readable, featuring Anne Lamott
The Era of Banning Librarians, featuring Amanda Jones
The Rejection Episode, featuring Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner
Unclassifiable and Uncontainable: In Celebration of Art That Can’t Be Pinned Down, featuring Brontez Purnell
Structure and Form, featuring Jane Alison
New Ways of Thinking About Memoir, featuring Maggie Smith and Shze-Hui Tjoa
Fiction Outliers, featuring Rainbow Rowell and Isabel Cañas
Self-Exposure and Writing the Story You Have to Write, featuring Javier Zamora and Susan Kiyo Ito
Wisdom from the Publishing Trenches, featuring Lisa Leshne and Kathleen Schmidt
Getting Reinspired after Failed or Abandoned Book Projects, featuring Paolo Bacigalupi
Being a Voice for Causes That Matter, featuring Naomi Klein
How Secrets Fuel Memoir Writing, featuring Margaret Juhae Lee
On the Awards We Receive and the Rewards We Make, featuring Jayne Anne Phillips
How Big Questions Inform Fiction, featuring Rachel Khong
Breaking New Ground in Memoir, featuring Shze-Hui Tjoa
The Big Novel, featuring Garth Risk Hallberg
Remembering and Forgetting: The Refugee Journey, featuring Viet Thanh Nguyen
Behind the Scenes of Selling Books, featuring Josh Cook
Be the Change You Want To See, featuring Dhonielle Clayton
The Raw Truth About Exposure, featuring Susan Kiyo Ito
Deep Memoir, featuring Jennifer Leigh Selig
Grief: The Hardest Emotion to Write, featuring Claire Jiménez
Creating New Forms—and Rearranging the Alphabet, featuring Elwin Cotman
The Art of Intimacy, featuring Stacey D’Erasmo
The State of the Book Review, featuring John McMurtrie
Social Responsibility in Fiction, featuring Naomi Kanakia
Getting Real About Book Publishing, featuring Kathleen Schmidt
The Big Familia of Writing Inspiration, featuring Tomas Moniz
Other People’s Words, featuring Lissa Soep
Light-hearted Writing During Heavy-hearted Times, featuring Neely Tubati-Alexander
Strategies for Writing About Childhood Trauma, featuring Javier Zamora
Recovering from the Stigma of a "Failed" First Novel, featuring Ethel Rohan
Journeying into Writerly Aesthetic, featuring K-Ming Chang
Breaking Into Ghostwriting and Work-for-Hire Writing, featuring Aubre Andrus
How Stories Get Carried Through the Generations and in Our Bones, featuring Ingrid Rojas Contreras
Get Into Your Writing Using All the Senses, featuring Janet Fitch
How to Be Self-Revealing in Memoir When You're Not In Real Life, featuring Dr. Brian H. Williams
Hidden Stories, featuring Vanessa Chan
The Future of the Book, featuring Maja Thomas
The New Year's Un-resolution Show
The Subtle Art of Attunement and Its Bearing on Our Writing, featuring Baron Wormser
Finding and Building the Community That’s Right for You, with Alexa Bigwarfe
The Higher Truth of Fiction, featuring Jamila Minnicks
The Origin Story, featuring Deepa Anappara and Taymour Soomro
One Sentence Leads to a Second Sentence: Pushing Through the Muddy Middle of NaNoWriMo, featuring Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner
Get Inspired to Write from One of the Most Prolific Women Writers in History, featuring Allison Gilbert
Gothic Stories’ Long History of Drawing from Everyday Monsters, featuring Isabel Cañas
Playing with Narration in Memoir, with Maggie Smith
For the Love of Fanfiction, featuring Rainbow Rowell
The Art of Coauthoring, featuring Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché
The Best Way to Learn to Write a Novel? Write It!, featuring Kayvion Lewis
Dreaming and Writing, featuring Tzivia Gover
What Short Stories Do That Novels Can’t, featuring Ghassan Zeineddine
Unconventional Points of View, featuring Jimin Han
Agent Insights, featuring Lisa Leshne
The Art of Memoir, featuring Rebecca Carroll and Jeannine Ouellette
Storytelling from Legacy Authors, featuring Gish Jen and Peggy Orenstein
The Business of Publishing, featuring Rachael Herron and Joe Biel
High-Stakes Fiction, featuring Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah and Ana Reyes
Parent-Adult Child Dynamics for Writers, featuring Gail Warner (Brooke’s mom)
The Art of Writing Unlikeable Characters, featuring Ben Purkert
Community as Muse, featuring Kellye Garrett
Coming-of-Age Stories, featuring Yasmin Azad
Graphic Novels, Literary Collage, and Poetry Comics, featuring Kelcey Ervick
Leveraging Your Why, featuring N.D. Jones
Taking the Dare, featuring Krystal Marquis
Stories That Must Be Told, featuring Nicole Chung
Writing a Violent Story with Love, featuring Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
Investigating Toward Deeper Truths, featuring Gretchen Cherington
The Mystery Is the Clarity, featuring Charif Shanahan
Pushing Boundaries in Book Publishing, featuring Joe Biel
Writing with Raw Honesty about Family, featuring Rebecca Carroll
Dollars and Cents—the Money Episode, featuring Rachael Herron
On Pioneering and Why It Matters, featuring Donna Hill
Executing an Ambitious Book Project, featuring Jinwoo Chong
The Themed Poetry Collection, featuring Heather Bourbeau
The Literature of Longing, featuring Madelaine Lucas
The Self-improvement Memoir, featuring Peggy Orenstein
Mining Tension in Fiction, featuring Gish Jen
How We Can Reclaim Our Stories Through Fiction, featuring Cheryl A. Head
Memoirs That Risk Everything, featuring Eden Boudreau
The Art of Brevity, featuring Grant Faulkner
How Psychology Drives Good Fiction, featuring Ana Reyes
Making Art from Your Life, featuring Jeannine Ouellette
The Art of Revision, featuring Peter Ho Davies
True Inclusion in Book Publishing, featuring Rebekah Borucki
Discipline and the Writing Life, featuring Adriana Trigiani
Saving Reading, featuring Andrew Limbong
Getting Reinspired, Again, with Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner
Having Fun with Book and Amazon Marketing, featuring Dave Chesson
A New Take on Climate Fiction, featuring Aya de León
No Wasted Words, featuring Sarah Manguso
Unexpected Creative Intersections and Influences, featuring Angie Cruz
Radical Fiction Packaged as a Trojan Horse, featuring Xochitl Gonzalez
Writing Racial Dynamics in YA fiction, featuring David Yoon
The Writer’s Ego, featuring Steve Almond
Craft-minded series: Trusting the Craft You Already Know, featuring Andrea Bartz
Craft-minded series: How or Whether to Evolve Your Aesthetic or Style, featuring Lan Samantha Chang
Craft-minded series: Reflection as a Way to Make Meaning in Memoir, featuring Prince Shakur
Craft-minded series: Placing Yourself in Broader Historical Contexts, featuring Danyel Smith
Craft-minded series: Writing "Imaginative Fiction," featuring Jeff VanderMeer
Craft-minded series: Craft as Shaper of Story, featuring Morgan Talty
Craft-minded series: Characterization, featuring A.M. Homes
How to Have an Opinion in Memoir, featuring Mychal Denzel Smith
On Writing and Selling Trauma, featuring Stephanie Foo
How to Follow Your Passions When the Creative Expression Feels Elusive, featuring Charlie Jane Anders and Azar Nafisi
Emotional Expression Is as Scary and Important as You Think It Is, featuring Erica Jong and Lilly Dancyger
Using Subtext and Omission to Achieve More by Writing Less, featuring EJ Koh and Charmaine Wilkerson
For the Love of Fantasy, featuring Kwame Mbalia and Namina Forna
Writing Intimate Truths, featuring Ashley C. Ford and Melissa Febos
The Collaborative Force of Anthologies, featuring Stephanie Raffelock
Straddling Lusciousness and Social Consciousness in Romance, featuring Angelina Lopez
Executing Funny in Memoir with One of the Most Celebrated Cartoonists of Our Time, featuring David Sipress
Genre-Blending and Bending, featuring Barbara Graham
Making and Finding Meaning, featuring Kathryn Schulz
The Power of Omission, featuring Charmaine Wilkerson
Changing Your Life Story, featuring Linda Holmes
Writing from Inside Your Industry, featuring Zakiya Dalila Harris
Reading Dangerously, featuring Azar Nafisi
Imagining and Reconstructing in Memoir, featuring Julie Metz
The Skinny on Book Coaching, featuring Jennie Nash
Writing with Sensuality, featuring Leesa Cross-Smith
Writing What Terrifies You, featuring Ashley Woodfolk
Helping Books Remain a Vital Part of Our Culture, featuring Andy Hunter
Moral Ambiguity in Fiction, featuring Quentin Lee
All About Book Festivals, featuring Cherilyn Parsons
Setting Stories Free, featuring Caits Meissner and T Kira Madden
Probing the Line Between Insanity and Art, featuring Lee Kravetz
Tough-Love Marketing, featuring M.J. Rose
How We Think about Anger on the Page, featuring Lilly Dancyger
Can Writing Be Taught? featuring Lisa Stringfellow
How We Think and Write about Intimate Experiences, featuring Melissa Febos
The Art of Writing Forgiveness, featuring Ashley C. Ford
Writing to Make the World a Better Place, featuring Parker J. Palmer
The Drama of Friendships, featuring Jean Chen Ho
Research Is Not Just for Facts, featuring Margaret Verble
Out in the Open about Erotica, featuring Rachel Kramer Bussel
Risk It Like You Mean It, featuring Angela Engel
Borrowing from Mythic Structures, with Michelle Ruiz Keil
The Gift of Multitudes of Perspectives, featuring Farah Ali
Ringing in the New Year with Book-to-Film Recs!
Conviction—When You Know Your Story Resonates, featuring Alka Joshi
Fear and Desire, featuring Erica Jong
Migration as an Essential Shared Story, featuring Shanthi Sekaran
Challenging Your Perspective on the Journey to Getting Published, featuring Bella Mahaya Carter
Why Retelling Stories Is Always an Act of Creation, featuring Kwame Mbalia
Owning Your Authority as an Author, featuring J. Allen Cross
Allowing Anger to Fuel Your Writing, featuring Namina Forna
Get Ready for NaNoWriMo, featuring Chris Baty
The Art of Subtext, featuring EJ Koh
The Difficult Balance of Writing and Self-Care, featuring Charlie Jane Anders
The Staying Power of the Mother-Daughter Story, featuring Laura Davis
Books That Help Start Conversations with Kids, featuring Anastasia Higginbotham
Using Storytelling to Inform and Educate, featuring Kaitlyn Greenidge
Craft Is Never Neutral, featuring Matthew Salesses
Confronting Shame, featuring Firoozeh Dumas
Best of YA, featuring Laurie Halse Anderson and Marie Lu
Best of Sex Writing, featuring Deesha Philyaw and Kim Addonizio
Best of Memoir, featuring Mary Karr and Elizabeth Gilbert
Best of Debut Fiction, featuring Mateo Askaripour and Sameer Pandya
Best of Fantasy, featuring Hugh Howey and Victoria “V.E.” Schwab
The Joy and Angst of a Newly Released Book, featuring Grant Faulkner
To Plot or Not? featuring Jean Hanff Korelitz
Writing the Body and Sex in Memoir, featuring Gina Frangello
Permission To Write and Getting It Right, featuring Rebecca Makkai
Unearthing Unknown Stories, featuring Stacey Lee
Ready, Set, Memoir, featuring Lindsey Grant
Comedy as Tragedy Plus Time, featuring Annabelle Gurwitch
“Whodunnits” and Other Genre Fiction We Love, featuring Tracy Clark