Ronit Plank's Blog, page 5
May 29, 2025
Episode 173 ft. Ruthie Ackerman
Ruthie Ackerman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about maternal ambivalence and coming from a long line of women who abandoned their children, taking motherhood on from different angles, feeling ashamed of shame, illuminating what we need to about ourselves, listening to our inner voice, breaking cycles, focusing our work on the memoirist’s journey and search for understanding, when family members read our memoir, a close look at the trajectory of her book deal, finding another angle to a story, honing in on the universal question our memoir is asking, when the book needs to be something very different from what you imagined, The Ignite Writers Collective, and her memoir The Mother Code.
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Episode 173 ft. Ruthie Ackerman May 29, 2025
Ruthie Ackerman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about maternal ambivalence and coming from a long line of women who abandoned their children, taking motherhood on from different angles, feeling ashamed of shame, illuminating what we need to about ourselves,...
Episode 172 ft. Daria Burke May 27, 2025
Daria Burke joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about sharing her journey out of Detroit where she was raised in poverty and the question that inspired her memoir, writing well and being well while writing, running away from the past, writing deeply and with...
Episode 171 ft. Tom McAllister May 22, 2025
Tom McAllister joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding the right container for our work trusting our writing to speak for itself, giving ourselves homework, writing constraints as guiding principles, his approach to teaching nonfiction, the challenge...
The post Episode 173 ft. Ruthie Ackerman appeared first on Ronit Plank.
May 27, 2025
Episode 172 ft. Daria Burke
Daria Burke joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about sharing her journey out of Detroit where she was raised in poverty and the question that inspired her memoir, writing well and being well while writing, running away from the past, writing deeply and with courage, refusing to believe in inevitability, doing the unfinished business of raising ourselves, surviving the retelling of our story, holding space for each of the versions of ourselves, how she delivered the investigative reporting aspects of her memoir, rewriting the stories we tell ourselves, posttraumatic growth, embracing full frontal honesty, and her new memoir Of My Own Making.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 172 ft. Daria Burke May 27, 2025
Daria Burke joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about sharing her journey out of Detroit where she was raised in poverty and the question that inspired her memoir, writing well and being well while writing, running away from the past, writing deeply and with...
Episode 171 ft. Tom McAllister May 22, 2025
Tom McAllister joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding the right container for our work trusting our writing to speak for itself, giving ourselves homework, writing constraints as guiding principles, his approach to teaching nonfiction, the challenge...
Episode 170 ft. Bonny Reichert May 20, 2025
Bonny Reichert joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not knowing if she’d find a way to tell the story that weighed on her, growing up in the shadow of traumatic family history, selling on proposal and working out the boundaries of a book, her background as...
The post Episode 172 ft. Daria Burke appeared first on Ronit Plank.
May 22, 2025
Episode 171 ft. Tom McAllister
Tom McAllister joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding the right container for our work trusting our writing to speak for itself, giving ourselves homework, writing constraints as guiding principles, his approach to teaching nonfiction, the challenge of self-promotion, strategies for creating companion pieces, stating things boldly and with confidence, the podcast Book Fight he co-hosts, and how he wrote a short essay for every year of his life and turned it into his new book It All Felt Impossible:42 Years in 42 Essays.
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Episode 171 ft. Tom McAllister May 22, 2025
Tom McAllister joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding the right container for our work trusting our writing to speak for itself, giving ourselves homework, writing constraints as guiding principles, his approach to teaching nonfiction, the challenge...
Episode 170 ft. Bonny Reichert May 20, 2025
Bonny Reichert joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not knowing if she’d find a way to tell the story that weighed on her, growing up in the shadow of traumatic family history, selling on proposal and working out the boundaries of a book, her background as...
Episode 169 ft. Vicky Nguyen May 15, 2025
Vicky Nguyen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up Vietnamese in America and what this country has meant for someone like her, writing memoir as a public figure, pivoting as a writer, not being too quick to self-edit, managing backstory to keep a...
The post Episode 171 ft. Tom McAllister appeared first on Ronit Plank.
May 20, 2025
Episode 170 ft. Bonny Reichert
Bonny Reichert joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not knowing if she’d find a way to tell the story that weighed on her, growing up in the shadow of traumatic family history, selling on proposal and working out the boundaries of a book, her background as a food journalist, hammering out the details of the narrative arc, eliminating the squishy middle, reverse outlining for emotional resonance, creating composite characters, telling a story through food, crafting the self as a character, shortening chapters for flexibility, drawing the complexity and sense of beauty and wonder around her father’s story of surviving the Holocaust, and her memoir How to Share an Egg.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 170 ft. Bonny Reichert May 20, 2025
Bonny Reichert joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not knowing if she’d find a way to tell the story that weighed on her, growing up in the shadow of traumatic family history, selling on proposal and working out the boundaries of a book, her background as...
Episode 169 ft. Vicky Nguyen May 15, 2025
Vicky Nguyen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up Vietnamese in America and what this country has meant for someone like her, writing memoir as a public figure, pivoting as a writer, not being too quick to self-edit, managing backstory to keep a...
Episode 168 ft. KB Brookins May 13, 2025
KB Brookins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about transness, masculinity, and race, how how being a writer has crystalized their experience and made it legible to an audience and to themselves, turning to prose to say the hard things, the tenacity of...
The post Episode 170 ft. Bonny Reichert appeared first on Ronit Plank.
May 15, 2025
Episode 169 ft. Vicky Nguyen
Vicky Nguyen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up Vietnamese in America and what this country has meant for someone like her, writing memoir as a public figure, pivoting as a writer, not being too quick to self-edit, managing backstory to keep a memoir propulsive, having conversations with loved ones about shared family history, connecting through vulnerability, book promotion as a whole other job, exhausting every marketing channel, writing about people who don’t necessarily want to be in our memoirs, how we “rememoir” things, digging deep, and her new memoir Boat Baby.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 169 ft. Vicky Nguyen May 15, 2025
Vicky Nguyen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up Vietnamese in America and what this country has meant for someone like her, writing memoir as a public figure, pivoting as a writer, not being too quick to self-edit, managing backstory to keep a...
Episode 168 ft. KB Brookins May 13, 2025
KB Brookins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about transness, masculinity, and race, how how being a writer has crystalized their experience and made it legible to an audience and to themselves, turning to prose to say the hard things, the tenacity of...
Episode 167 ft. Michelle Yang May 6, 2025
Michelle Yang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her bipolar diagnosis and becoming a mental health advocate, immigrating to the U.S. as a young child, writing at the intersection of body image, mental health, and Asian American identity, building an...
The post Episode 169 ft. Vicky Nguyen appeared first on Ronit Plank.
May 13, 2025
Episode 168 ft. KB Brookins
KB Brookins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about transness, masculinity, and race, how how being a writer has crystalized their experience and made it legible to an audience and to themselves, turning to prose to say the hard things, the tenacity of memoir, resisting erasure and pushing back on toxic systems, coming at creative nonfiction from a poetic impulse, having patience with ourselves, what we might need to let go of as writers, looking at our work with kinder eyes, the way we treat people because of gender, and their multi-themed memoir Pretty.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 168 ft. KB Brookins May 13, 2025
KB Brookins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about transness, masculinity, and race, how how being a writer has crystalized their experience and made it legible to an audience and to themselves, turning to prose to say the hard things, the tenacity of...
Episode 167 ft. Michelle Yang May 6, 2025
Michelle Yang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her bipolar diagnosis and becoming a mental health advocate, immigrating to the U.S. as a young child, writing at the intersection of body image, mental health, and Asian American identity, building an...
Episode 166 ft. Julie Brill Apr 29, 2025
Julie Brill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and her journey to understand the unexamined childhood stories she grew up with, being a reluctant memoirist and leaning into telling the story of an ordinary...
The post Episode 168 ft. KB Brookins appeared first on Ronit Plank.
May 6, 2025
Episode 167 ft. Michelle Yang
Michelle Yang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her bipolar diagnosis and becoming a mental health advocate, immigrating to the U.S. as a young child, writing at the intersection of body image, mental health, and Asian American identity, building an author platform, revisiting old family dynamics and patterns, grieving a family of origin, mourning make-believe mothers, doing a lot of processing before writing about trauma, keeping the reader in mind, removing societal stigma around serious mental health diagnoses, how she survived and found hope, and her new memoir Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 167 ft. Michelle Yang May 6, 2025
Michelle Yang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her bipolar diagnosis and becoming a mental health advocate, immigrating to the U.S. as a young child, writing at the intersection of body image, mental health, and Asian American identity, building an...
Episode 166 ft. Julie Brill Apr 29, 2025
Julie Brill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and her journey to understand the unexamined childhood stories she grew up with, being a reluctant memoirist and leaning into telling the story of an ordinary...
Episode 165 ft. Margaret Anne Mary Moore Apr 22, 2025
Margaret Anne Mary Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her realization at an early age that she wanted to be a nonfiction writer and memoirist, facing severe discrimination as a child with disabilities, how she wrote about her disability experience...
The post Episode 167 ft. Michelle Yang appeared first on Ronit Plank.
April 29, 2025
Episode 166 ft. Julie Brill
Julie Brill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and her journey to understand the unexamined childhood stories she grew up with, being a reluctant memoirist and leaning into telling the story of an ordinary person figuring things out, the Holocaust and the history of the Jews of Serbia, inherited memories, making ourselves the central character, when our parents’ foundational stories become ours, finding our place, permission to tell a story if you didn’t live through it, and her new memoir Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 166 ft. Julie Brill Apr 29, 2025
Julie Brill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and her journey to understand the unexamined childhood stories she grew up with, being a reluctant memoirist and leaning into telling the story of an ordinary...
Episode 165 ft. Margaret Anne Mary Moore Apr 22, 2025
Margaret Anne Mary Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her realization at an early age that she wanted to be a nonfiction writer and memoirist, facing severe discrimination as a child with disabilities, how she wrote about her disability experience...
Episode 164 ft. Diana Raab Apr 17, 2025
Diana Raab joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about connecting with ancestors and tuning into their guidance, books that need to be written, when publisher requests don’t resonate with us, adding prompts for readers, unwanted daughters and intergenerational...
The post Episode 166 ft. Julie Brill appeared first on Ronit Plank.
April 22, 2025
Episode 165 ft. Margaret Anne Mary Moore
Margaret Anne Mary Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her realization at an early age that she wanted to be a nonfiction writer and memoirist, facing severe discrimination as a child with disabilities, how she wrote about her disability experience on a granular level, using a communication device, taking breaks to work on other aspects of a project when the writing process grows tiresome, devoting chapters to a single theme, striving to make characterizations rich in detail, looking at rejection juxtaposed against life circumstances, how traumatic memories get seared into our memory, compassion and acceptance, and her memoir Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood’s Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 165 ft. Margaret Anne Mary Moore Apr 22, 2025
Margaret Anne Mary Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her realization at an early age that she wanted to be a nonfiction writer and memoirist, facing severe discrimination as a child with disabilities, how she wrote about her disability experience...
Episode 164 ft. Diana Raab Apr 17, 2025
Diana Raab joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about connecting with ancestors and tuning into their guidance, books that need to be written, when publisher requests don’t resonate with us, adding prompts for readers, unwanted daughters and intergenerational...
Episode 163 ft. Rebe Huntman Apr 15, 2025
Rebe Huntman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about who are we as women and what holds us together as a culture, following questions to their conclusions and changing in the process, running away from grief, magical thinking, reinventing ourselves,...
The post Episode 165 ft. Margaret Anne Mary Moore appeared first on Ronit Plank.
April 17, 2025
Episode 164 ft. Diana Raab
Diana Raab joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about connecting with ancestors and tuning into their guidance, books that need to be written, when publisher requests don’t resonate with us, adding prompts for readers, unwanted daughters and intergenerational trauma, how books we don’t like help us, adding prompts for readers, tapping into authentic voice, and her new book Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors.
Listen on iTunes Listen on Spotify YOU MAY ALSO LIKE
Episode 164 ft. Diana Raab Apr 17, 2025
Diana Raab joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about connecting with ancestors and tuning into their guidance, books that need to be written, when publisher requests don’t resonate with us, adding prompts for readers, unwanted daughters and intergenerational...
Episode 163 ft. Rebe Huntman Apr 15, 2025
Rebe Huntman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about who are we as women and what holds us together as a culture, following questions to their conclusions and changing in the process, running away from grief, magical thinking, reinventing ourselves,...
Episode 162 ft. Bridgett M. Davis Apr 8, 2025
Bridgett M. Davis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the effect of trauma and weathering on Black lives, the unique bond between sisters, showing relationships in action and dialogue, homing in on a throughline, giving our books and writing the space...
The post Episode 164 ft. Diana Raab appeared first on Ronit Plank.
