Let’s Talk Memoir

Matt Fogelson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about coming to grips with the death of his father, the struggle to not pass down the emotional distance he grew up with to his own son, grabbing emotions from scenes and seeing what germinates, finding the forward momentum and narrative drive for our memoirs, when clarity comes later, putting a parent on a pedestal, recognizing our behavior and changing the dynamic, trying to be emotionally present when we’re physically present, living without self-imposed constraints, searching for universal kernels in our work, using core themes as guideposts and touchstones, and his new memoir Restrung: Fatherhood in a Different Key. Also mentioned in this episode: - writing during the pandemic- fatherhood and emotional intimacy- creating a memoir from a collection of essays Books mentioned in this episode:- Angelea’s Ashes by Frank McCourt- Wild by Cheryl Strayed- Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls- The Liars Club by Mary Karr- Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry Matt Fogelson is the author of the memoir Restrung: Fatherhood in a Different Key. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and TIME. He writes the Substack newsletter Fine Tuning, about music, memory, and parenting. Connect with Matt: Website: https://www.mattfogelson.com/ Substack: https://mattfogelson.substack.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mattfogelson/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-fogelson-94200895/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/finetuningfan – 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

Kate Jackson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about discovering the family you were raised in was not what you thought, mourning the life we didn’t get a chance to live, writing about the missing, if wholeness is possible, longing for family, how unknowing can be bewildering and shame inducing, when our identity flips, genetic privilege, untangling threads, writing like no one is reading, facing repercussions for telling our story, what we have permission to say, feeling we can own our story, and her new collection of 28 literary essays by adoptees, donor-conceived people, others who’ve learned about misattributed parentage Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship. October 2026 book events for Relative Strangers: https://bkjacksonwriter.com/events/ Also in this episode: -untangling threads -when agents ghost -simultaneously working on two projects Books mentioned in this episode: -On Writing by Stephen King -Still Writing by Dani Shapiro -Thinking About Memoir by Abigail Thomas -Permission by Elissa Altmen -Mothers of Sparta by Dawn Davies -This Boys Life by Tobias Flynn -And When Did You Last See Your Father by Blake Morrison -Nick Flynn’s memoirs B.K. (Kate) Jackson is an author; a developmental editor and certified book coach; and a journalist with bylines in HuffPost, The Los Angeles Times, The Sun, SurvivorLit, Whale Road Review, Hippocampus Magazine, WIRED, and more. She earned a BA and an MA from UCLA. Kate is the founder and editor of Severance (severancemag.com)—a magazine and community for adoptees and individuals who’ve discovered misattributed parentage. She’s the editor of the anthology Relative Strangers: Inheritance, Identity, and the Meaning of Kinship, and she's revising a memoir about maternal abandonment and family secrets. She lives in Milford, Pennsylvania. Find her at www.bkjacksonwriter.com; creativelyadhd.substack.com; and halfasorrow.substack.com. Connect with Kate: Website: www.bkjacksonwriter.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/b.k.jackson/ X: https://x.com/jaxbkjax Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/bkjackson.bsky.social Threads: https://www.threads.com/@b.k.jackson Substack: https://substack.com/@bkjackson877028 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kate.b.jackson/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/b-k-kate-jackson-50a6571b0/ Purchase Book: www.bkjacksonwriter.com/book – 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

Suzanne Roberts joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about why writing prompts are so powerful, images that haunt us, avoiding revenge prose, revising to create a rounded character, writing our truth, getting better at dialogue, how to navigate AI, the joy of creating something from start to finish, writing about family and friends, writing about our bodies, building writing community, how reading time is writing time, enjoying exploration, essay as immediate gratification while writing memoir, making stories from shame, and her new multi-genre craft book divided by theme 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for Writers. Suzanne’s first Let’s Talk Memoir interview: https://ronitplank.com/2023/02/28/lets-talk-memoir-season-2-episode-16-ft-suzanne-roberts/ Camille Dungy’s Let’s Talk Memoir interview: https://ronitplank.com/2023/05/02/lets-talk-memoir-episode-41-ft-camille-t-dungy/ Also in this episode: -reading broadly and deeply -memoir as a gift to the universe -writing for hands and hearts you cannot see Books mentioned in this episode: - The Art of Death by Edwidge Danticat - The Art of Description by Mark Doty - The Art of Time in Memoir by Sven Birkerts - Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft by Janet Burroway - The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick - The Triggering Town by Richard Hugo - I Would Die if I Were You by Emily Rapp Black - The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr - Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert - Tell it Slant by Brenda Miller - Negotiating with the Dead: A Writer on Writing by Margaret Atwood - The Writing Life by Annie Dillard Suzanne Roberts is the author of the essay collection Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties, the memoir-in-essays Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel, and the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail, four full-length poetry collections, and a creative writing craft book: 52 Writing Prompts: Inspiration for the Creative Writer (October 2026, The University of Nebraska Press). Named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic’s Traveler, Suzanne’s work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays and included in The Best Women’s Travel Writing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, CNN, National Geographic Traveler, Ploughshares, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, The Rumpus, The Fourth Genre, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada-Reno and lives in South Lake Tahoe, California. More information may be found on her website: www.suzanneroberts.net Website: www.suzanneroberts.net IG: @suzanneroberts28 X: suzannneroberts FB: https://www.facebook.com/suzanne.roberts.798/ BSky: @suzanneroberts Here are the links Suzanne’s books: https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496239563/52-writing-prompts/ https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496231024/animal-bodies/ https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9781496236920/almost-somewhere/ https://www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/nebraska/9781496222848/bad-tourist/ – 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 Sea

Jamie Leigh Lorente joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not getting to know her biological father who emigrated from Cuba during the Cold War from Cuba as an unaccompanied minor until the end of his life, how we learn to understand and accept one another despite our cultural differences, evolving as a writer and human as we write memoir, being able to comfort and repair the different versions of ourselves, coming of age and being safe, experimenting with alternating points of view to increase compassion and empathy, discovering a softening toward men, feeling too vulnerable to share a story, the existential fear of exile from our communities, loving each other despite our conflicts, the memoir writing process allowing us to get closer to loved ones, returning to and forgiving our authentic selves, and her new memoir My Three Fathers. Also in this episode: -complex trauma -Jungian empty chair exercise -mentally preparing to let a story out into the world Books mentioned in this episode: Clam Down by Anelise Chen Family Trouble: Memoirists on the Hazards and Rewards of Revealing Family edited by Joy Castro Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg Her by Christa Parravani Jamie Leigh Lorente is a Cuban-American writer, veteran, and advocate. She writes to reclaim the body and reframe the narrative of survival. Her work appears in My Teeth Don’t Chew on Shrapnel, the Anthology of Veterans Writing, Afterwords: The Real Me, and Poetic Prosthesis: Trauma and Language in Contemporary Veterans’ Writing (Edinburgh University Press, 2022). She teaches writing at San Francisco Film School and facilitates veteran writing workshops. Her short documentary, My Body Is explores the healing power of poetry. https://vimeo.com/1013310340?share=copy Connect with Jamie: Website: www.jamieleighlorente.com. (not live yet) Instagram: jamie_leigh_lorente Substack: Jamie Leigh Lorente @jamieleighlorente – 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

Deborah Derrickson Kossmann joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how complicated family dynamics culminated in her mother’s severe hoarding disorder, grieving what you didn’t get as a child, going back to rescue the past, sharing family secrets, recognizing shame in loved ones, telling a story in a fair way, how anger is a shortcut, waiting until someone has passed to write about them, how editing makes us better writers, recognizing when there is an emotional piece missing, wanting a memoir to read propulsively, keeping narrative arc in mine, and her memoir LOST FOUND KEPT. Also in this episode: -trying to be fair and accurate -thinking about your book as a reader -the important work of publishing and promotion Books mentioned in this episode: -The Memory Police by Yoko Ogawa -Writers and Lovers by Lily King Deborah Derrickson Kossmann won Trio House Press's inaugural 2023 Aurora Polaris Creative Nonfiction Award for LOST FOUND KEPT: A MEMOIR (January 2025). Book Pages named it one of the Best Memoirs of 2025. She is currently working on a new book COMPLICATIONS OF CAPTIVITY. Deb’s humorous essays have appeared several times as “Modern Love” columns in The New York Times and her story about her relationship with the world’s oldest captive gorilla appeared in the “Opinionator” section of that newspaper. Her poetry, essays and feature articles have been published in Bellevue Literary Review, Nashville Review, Memoir Monday, Rhino, Tiferet, Psychotherapy Networker, and PSYCHE, to name a few. She was the winner of the Short Memoir Competition at the Philadelphia First Person Arts Festival and has received a Poetry Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. A clinical psychologist in private practice, she lives in Havertown with her husband and Sofia Carmela, a cat with a whole lot of “tortitude.” Connect with Deborah: Website: lostfoundkept.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/drdebkossmann/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/people/Deb-Derrickson-Kossmann/61562692720716/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deb.derricksonkossmann Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deb_derrickson_kossmann/ Substack: https://debderricksonkossmann.substack.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drdebkossmann/ – 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