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.

Also in this episode:

-reading broadly

-surviving cancer multiple times

-how trauma manifests later in life

Book mentioned in this episode:

This Boys Life by Tobias Wolff

Paula by Isabel Allende

Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick

Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo

Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo

Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a poet, memoirist, workshop leader, thought-leader and award-winning author of fourteen books. Her work has been widely published and anthologized. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She frequently speaks and writes on writing for healing and transformation. Her 14th and newest book is Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors, A memoir with reflection and writing prompts (2024).Raab writes for Psychology Today, The Good Men Project, Sixty and Me, Thrive Global, and is a guest writer for many others.

Connect with Diana:

Website: https://www.dianaraab.com

Forthcoming poetry anthology:

https://gunpowderpress.com/product/women-in-a-golden-state/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianaraab/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-raab-phd-a1850911/

Facebook (Author): https://www.facebook.com/DianaRaab.Author/

Facebook (Diana M Raab): https://www.facebook.com/diana.m.raab/

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/512931.Diana_Raab

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/dianaraab1

Diana’s monthly newsletter: https://dianaraab.com/signup/

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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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

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, Afro-Cuban traditions and relationships to the dead, hungering for answers, permission to be more than one thing, losing mothers and finding them again through memoir, spiritual mothers and keeping the dead close, and her new memoir My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle.

Also in this episode:

-getting a do over

-trusting the writing process

-including the beautiful and the terrible

Books mentioned in this episode:

When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

Poetry by Richard Blanco

Poetry by Aracelis Girmay

REBE HUNTMAN is the author of My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle (February 2025, Monkfish Books), a memoir that traces her search to connect with her mother—thirty years after her death—among the gods and saints of Cuba. A former professional Latin and Afro-Cuban dancer and choreographer, for over a decade Rebe directed Chicago’s award-winning Danza Viva Center for World Dance, Art & Music and its resident dance company, One World Dance Theater. She collaborates with native artists in Cuba and South America, and has been featured in LATINA Magazine, Chicago Magazine, and the Chicago Tribune, and on Fox and ABC. Rebe’s essays, stories, and poems appear or are forthcoming in such places as The Southern Review, The Missouri Review, Parabola, Ninth Letter, The Cincinnati Review, and the PINCH, and have earned her an Ohio Individual Excellence Award as well as fellowships from the Macondo Writers' Conference, Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Ragdale Foundation, PLAYA Residency, Hambidge Center, and Brush Creek Foundation. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from The Ohio State University and lives in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, and Delaware, Ohio. Both e’s in her name are long. Find her at www. rebehuntman.com and on Instagram at @rebehuntman.

Connect with Rebe:

Website: www.rebehuntman.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rebehuntman

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebehuntmanauthor

Links to purchase the book at www.rebehuntman.com/mymotherinhavana

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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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Megan Williams joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being a new mother while training at the police academy, looking for validation, resisting the urge to punish ourselves, pushing back against the voice of patriarchal culture, writing to our past self, going too far and not going far enough, the loneliness of motherhood, setting boundaries in memoir, testing ourselves, what motherhood feels like now, moving elegantly through time in memoir, surrounding yourself with talented writers, frontloading a manuscript, and her memoir One Bad Mother: A Mother’s Search for Meaning in the Police Academy.

Also in this episode:

-thinking as a form of writing

-writing community

-writing conferences

Books mentioned in this episode:

Crossing the River by Carol Smith

Starry Field by Margaret Juhae Lee

Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Alliosn

You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith

A Well-Trained Wife by Tia Levings

Megan Williams is the author of One Bad Mother: A Mother’s Search for Meaning in the Police Academy. After graduating from Haverford College, Megan received her Ph.D. in English from Temple University and taught at Lafayette College and Santa Clara University. She has moved across the country—never landing in the middle—three times in twenty years. She now lives in Bellingham with her husband, who runs Blue Dog Bakery and keeps their teenage twins, rescued cat, horse, and mastiff full of treats.

Connect with Megan Williams:

Website: www.meganwilliamsauthor.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1347114175

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ottoisking/

Tiktok: @one.bad.mother

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/megan-williams-6585844a/

Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/one-bad-mother-a-woman-s-search-for-meaning-in-motherhood-and-the-philadelphia-police-academy-megan-williams/20964845?ean=9781960573858

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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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Paul Lisicky joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how his appreciation for Joni Mitchell and love of her work shaped his life as a musician and a writer, vulnerability and uncertainty on the page, falling outside the containers of what’s expected, the singular and universal in our work, vulnerability and uncertainty in our creative process, corralling ourselves back to our 5 senses, feeling structure in our bodies, writing for the reader, developing ourselves as artists, being tenacious in pursuing our vision, writing about our idols, and his new book Song So Wild and Blue.

Also in this episode:

-image-based writing

-writing a proposal for the first time

-how structure can help liberate our work

Books/Authors mentioned in this episode:

Sigrid Nunez

Elizabeth McCracken

Sarah Manguso

Mary Gaitskill

Joy Williams

Barry Lopez

Annie Liontis

E.J. Koh

All Fours by Miranda July

Paul Lisicky is the author of seven books including Song So Wild and Blue: A Life with the Music of Joni Mitchell, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World, The Narrow Door: A Memoir of Friendship. A recipient of Fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, he is a professor of English in the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Rutgers University-Camden. He lives in Brooklyn.

Website: http://www.paullisicky.net/

Connect with Paul: https://bsky.app/profile/paullisicky.bsky.social

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/paul_lisicky/

Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/song-so-wild-and-blue-a-life-with-the-music-of-joni-mitchell-paul-lisicky/21517908?ean=9780063280373

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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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Maggie Smith returns to Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about letting imposter syndrome go, fiercely guarding your interior life, getting back to the core place where creativity thrives, rewriting a book from scratch, how writing feels in the body, swerving out of your creative lane, battling the sophomore slump, what it feels like to be watched, when ego gets in the way, fears of paralyzing failure, playing the long game, the best advice she ever got, staying agile and awake in the creative process, and her new book Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life.

Ronit’s first interview with Maggie Smith: https://ronitplank.com/2023/04/11/lets-talk-memoir-episode-38-ft-maggie-smith/

Also in this episode:

-the inner critic

-assembling a book freestyle

-tenacity and grit

Books mentioned in this episode:

Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Allison

The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

Truth is the Arrow, Mercy is the Bow by Steve Almond

Greywolf Press series “The Art of…” books

Maggie Smith is the New York Times bestselling author of eight books of poetry and prose, including You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir (One Signal/Atria, 2023); My Thoughts Have Wings, illustrated by Leanne Hatch (Balzer+Bray/Harperkids, 2024); Goldenrod: Poems (One Signal/Atria, 2021); Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Atria, 2020); and Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017). Smith's next book is Dear Writer: Pep Talks & Practical Advice for the Creative Life, forthcoming from One Signal/Atria in April 2025.

Her poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, AGNI, Ploughshares, Image, the Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, American Poetry Review, The Southern Review, and many other journals and anthologies. In 2016 her poem "Good Bones" went viral internationally; since then it has been translated into nearly a dozen languages and featured on the CBS primetime drama Madam Secretary. Smith has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Academy of American Poets, the Ohio Arts Council, the Sustainable Arts Foundation, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.

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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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Paula Delgado-Kling joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how her research and reporting on child soldiers, drug trafficking, and the revolutionary armed forces of Columbia (FARC) led her to tell the story of one woman and her family, the relationships we forge with whom we write about, allowing memoir to answer our questions, negotiating language barriers and class differences, coming to truth and understanding, grounding ourselves, hitting upon the structure a book needs, searching for humanity amidst ongoing violence, and her new book Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood.

Also in this episode:

-working as a journalist

-becoming embedded in the story we’re covering

-negotiating dangerous environments to gather information

Books mentioned in this episode:

Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho

It can take a really long time but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important or good.

Paula Delgado-Kling holds degrees in comparative literature/French civilizations, international affairs, and creative writing from Brown University, Columbia University, and The New School, respectively. Leonor, for which she received two grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, is her first book. Excerpts of this book have appeared in Narrative, The Literary Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and Happano.org in Japan. Her work for the Mexican monthly news magazine Gatopardo was nominated for the Simon Bolivar Award, Colombia’s top journalism prize, and anthologized in Las Mejores Crónicas de Gatopardo (Random House Mondadori, 2006). Born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Toronto, Canada, Delgado-Kling now splits her time between Boca Raton, FL and New York City. To learn more, please visit PaulaDelgadoKling.com or follow her on Instagram @PaulaDelgadoKling.

Connect with Paula

Website: http://pauladelgadokling.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091961238236

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ColombiaTalk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pauladelgadokling/

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Leonor-Story-Childhood-Paula-Delgado-Kling/dp/1682194477?crid=1M4ML48WOEEV7&keywords=leonor&qid=1683308327&s=books&sprefix=leonor,stripbooks,97&sr=1-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=ongoicom-20&linkId=986106192c06afd126c43cfe6d22043d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

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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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers