Memoir Nation

This week’s episode is far reaching in scope—touching history, cultural inheritance and influence, food as a bridge, and what stories we have the authority to tell. Guest Madhushree Ghosh brings us into her inspiration for her newest book, Safar, which is the surprising history of Punjabi men who married Mexican women in California starting in the 1920s, and the reverberations those unions had on the people, the place, and the food over the next century. It’s a fascinating and multilayered interview that reminds us that there are so many ways into a story, and many stories waiting to be told. Madhushree Ghosh is the author of the award-winning culinary memoir, Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family. Her new book, Safar: Finding Home, History, and Culture through Punjabi Food in the American West, explores Punjabi migration to the American West transforming food, travel, prayer, and community. Madhushree’s Pushcart-nominated work on food, social justice, and immigration has been published in the Best American Essays in Food Writing, The New York Times, Vogue India, Washington Post, Los Angeles Review of Books, Poets and Writers, LA Times and others. She also runs the popular global literary salon & supper club, KhabaarCo. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s show is about lyricism! Lyricism in memoir is about using juxtaposition, gaps, and echo. It’s writing that advances by association via imagery and connotation, and language that sings. This is an invitation to step into a different way of thinking about your writing, and anyone can implement elements of lyricism. Guest Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh explains why lyric, hybrid, and mixed genre forms are so appealing and inspiring, especially to writers on the margins and how they speak to something more liminal and more fluid. Don’t miss this articulation of what’s appealing about writing This week’s Memoir Milestone is Rebecca N. Thompson’s Held Together: A Shared Memoir of Motherhood, Medicine, and Imperfect Love. Lee Horikoshi Roripaugh (she/they) is a biracial Nisei whose most recent book, unMothered, unTongued (2025), won the 2024 Sue William Silverman Prize for Creative Nonfiction in the AWP Award Series. They are also the author of a fiction collection, Reveal Codes (2023), winner of the Moon City Press Short Fiction Award; a chapbook, #stringofbeads (2023), winner of the Diode Chapbook Competition; and five volumes of poetry, most recently tsunami vs. the fukushima 50 (2019), named a “Best Book of 2019” by the New York Public Library and listed as a poetry finalist in the 2020 Lambda Literary Awards. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a wonderful episode for listeners ready to dive into topics ranging from aboutness, how to think about what you’re writing, and why your memoir should not be about you. Guest Marion Roach Smith shares with listeners her algorithm for writing personal writing, which include five forms: blog posts, personal essay, opinion pieces, long-form essays, and books. This is one-part craft and one-part deep dive into the genre from a writer and teacher of the form who’s been doing this work since the 80s. Not to be missed. On Memoir Milestones, we’re celebrating Kira Higgs's Winnowing: A Memoir of Spiritual Longing in Secular Life. Marion Roach Smith is the author of four books, including The Memoir Project, A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life (Grand Central Publishing). A former staffer at The New York Times, she has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and a talk show host on Sirius Satellite Radio. Marion has published in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Prevention, Good Housekeeping, The Los Angeles Times and more, and currently runs The Memoir Project, an online writing lab, at marionroach.com, where she teaches memoir worldwide. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s guest, David Lauterstein, joins us to talk about art and writing and purpose. Lauterstein’s book couldn’t NOT catch our eye. Sodomy Gods is a provocative title, and the point of giving his memoir this title was to make a point, to push readers to think about unequal treatment, and to stand proud. Lauterstein’s company, Nasty Pig, similarly pokes at assumptions, biases, and shame so often attached to queer sexuality. He and his partner, Frederick Kearney, launched the sex-positive brand in 1994, at the height of the AIDS crisis, when celebrating gay identity was itself an act of resistance. In this conversation, we talk about writing through grief and defiance, building something bold out of love and loss, and what it costs to tell the truth about who you are, and what doing so makes possible.David Lauterstein is the founder and CEO of the global queer brand Nasty Pig. He spent decades building a business and community before turning inward to write his memoir, Sodomy Gods, a deeply moving memoir about finding the courage to live authentically, the transformative power of chosen family, enduring love, and building a meaningful life on your own terms. Additionally, the book has been embraced as an important time capsule of being gay in the ’90s in New York amidst the AIDS crisis and is now housed in the Library of Congress, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia University, NYU, and other leading institutions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Given our deep love of the show “Somebody, Somewhere,” Memoir Nation is thrilled to have Murray Hill as a guest on the show. We’re celebrating his new memoir, Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man, where he shares how reading the stories of people like Tina Turner and Viola Davis inspired him to tell his own. Murray talks about the value of chosen family, how he chose to write about abuse in his memoir, while also keeping the story upbeat and inspiring. He shares openly about the challenges of writing the book, which took him five years. This is a delightful and candid episode by someone who’s shown how purpose can be a lifeline.Murray Hill, the self-proclaimed hardest-working middle-aged man in show business, is a one-man entertainment machine: comedian, host, actor, writer, producer, and walking time capsule of classic showbiz charm. Murray has spent decades turning every stage he steps on into his own personal variety show—and we expect the same today. Television audiences know him as the lovable Fred Rococo on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, which won a bunch of awards, but the main one is that it’s one of my favorite shows all-time. Murray’s talents extend beyond performance. He’s served as a guest correspondent for ABC News and Hulu’s Pride Across America, reporting live from the nation’s biggest Pride celebrations. NBC News named him one of the “30 Most Iconic and Influential Drag Performers in Modern History.” And his memoir, Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man just came out. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.