Let’s Talk Memoir

Alex Poppe joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about working in conflict zones, living abroad and negotiating cultural differences, teaching in northern Iraq, youth and female resilience, pursuing something elusive, using fiction techniques for creative nonfiction and essays, not standing on a soapbox in memoir, moving from the personal to the universal, safe domesticity vs. unpredictable intensity, feeling haunted, the tension between wanting to settle down and set roots but feeling desperate to travel, and her love letter to teaching the new memoir-in-essay Breakfast Wine: A Memoir of Chasing an Unconventional Life and Finding a Way Home.

 

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

 

Also in this episode:

-field reporting

-theTulsa Remote Program 

-starting chapters in scene and dialogue

Books mentioned in this episode 

-Woman in Berlin by Anonymous

-The Line Becomes a River: Dispatches from The Border by Francisco Cantú

-Hollywood Park by Mikel Jollett

-The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

-No Good Men Among the Living by Anand Gopal

-The Underground Girls of Kabul by Jenny Nordberg 

-The Natashas:The Horrific Inside Story of Slavery, Rape, and Murder in the Global Sex Trade by Victor Malarek

-Notebooks on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen 

-Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures: A True Story from Hell on Earth by Heidi Postlewait, Kenneth Cain and Andrew Thomson

 

Having worked in conflict zones such as Iraq, the West Bank, and Ukraine, Alex Poppe writes about fierce and funny women rebuilding their lives in the wake of violence. She is the award-winning author of four works of literary fiction. Breakfast Wine, her memoir-in-essay of her near decade teaching and volunteering in northern Iraq, celebrates women and youth resilience, post-conflict. Most recently, she served as the strategic communications advisor for a democracy and governance initiative at the US Agency for International Development (USAID). Alex continues to be awed by place, people, and their stories. 

 

Connect with Alex:

Website: www.alexpoppe.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallyalexpoppe/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/alex.poppe.16/

Get the book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/breakfast-wine-alex-poppe/22155518?ean=9781627205931

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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:

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Louise Southerden joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about building a tiny home in Australia by hand during the Covid pandemic, being a travel writer for much of her career, choosing freedom over security, writing about exes, struggling with how much backstory to put in, narrative arc and the hero’s journey, firming up a timeline, wanting to be fair in depicting loved ones, taking care of and pacing ourselves while we’re writing, creating the life that we want to live inside with words, being led by how the story wants to be told, and her new memoir TINY: A Memoir About Love, Letting Go and a Very Small House.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

Also in this episode:

-using Scrivener

-the freelance writing life

-what one really needs to be happy

 

Books mentioned in this episode: 

-Tracks by Robyn Davidson

-Unfinished Woman by Robyn Davidson

-Wifedom by Anna Funder

-The Little Red Writing Book by Mark Tredinnick 

-Things I Learned From Falling by Claire Nelson

 

Louise Southerden is an Australian author and award-winning travel writer who has spent more than 25 years travelling all over the world and won the Australian Travel Writer of the Year award a record five times. She’s the author of five non-fiction books including Surf’s Up, the world’s first surfing guide for women; a working holiday guide to Japan, where she once lived for a year and a half; an anthology of her best adventure travel tales; and her latest, TINY: A memoir about love, letting go and a very small house, published by Hardie Grant Explore. Originally from Sydney, Louise now lives and writes in her tiny home by the sea in northern NSW, Australia.

 

Connect with Louise:
Website: https://www.noimpactgirl.com/

More info about TINY on Louise's Substack: https://noimpactgirl.substack.com/p/tiny-a-memoir-about-love-letting-af1

TINY on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Tiny-Memoir-About-Letting-Small/dp/174117922X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.cDx-4ItRYaLsBKW5vu1dfQ.Pozgks-L91kJZfC4hCxsGFIuB_FqZlo7oJW31ra3GYU&qid=1755581587&sr=8-1

Living Big in a Tiny House episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipAxKp5fbvQ 

Substack: https://noimpactgirl.substack.com/ 

FB: https://www.facebook.com/noimpactgirl/#

Fishpond: https://www.fishpond.com/Books/Tiny-Louise-Southerden/9781741179224

 

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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

Anna Rollins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the relationship between evangelical purity culture and diet culture, incorporating research and reporting into personal narrative, the intricate connections between religion, God, and body shame, fearing our own desires, extreme thinking, body dysmorphia, viewing our bodies as suspect, the physical effects of belief systems, writing memoir plus, tying our work to the culture, learning how to pitch and get bylines, the logistics of placing short pieces in large outlets, religion on our own terms, rejecting scripts, and her new memoir Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

 

This episode is brought to you by Prose Playground. If you’ve been writing for years but haven’t published, have tons of ideas but can’t get them on the page, if you have a book coming out, or you’re simply curious about writing, join Prose Playground—an active, supportive writing community for writers at every level. Visit www.ProsePlayground.com to sign up free.

 

Also in this episode:

-church hurt

-publishing scores of stand alone essays

-tuning into the newscycle and calendar to sell our work

 

Books mentioned in this episode:

Before and After the Book Deal by Courtney Maum

Writing That Gets Noticed by Estelle Erasmus

The Byline Bible by Susan Shapiro

The Creative Act by Rick Rubin

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

 

Anna Rollins is the author of Famished: On Food, Sex, and Growing Up as a Good Girl. Her groundbreaking debut memoir examines the rhyming scripts of diet culture and evangelical purity culture, both of which direct women to fear their own bodies and appetites. Her writing has appeared in outlets like The New York Times, Slate, Electric Literature, Salon, Joyland, and more. She’s also written scholarly articles about composition and writing center studies. She’s an award-winning instructor who taught English in higher education for nearly 15 years. She is a 2025 West Virginia Creative Network Literary Arts Fellow. A lifelong Appalachian, she lives with her husband in West Virginia where they’re raising their three small children.

 

Connect with Anna:

Website: http://annajrollins.com

Substack: http://annajrollins.substack.com

Instagram: http://instagram.com/annajrollins

Book: https://amzn.to/3Lu6uHR

 

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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

Steve Eichenblatt joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing a father through abandonment, the abuse he endured from his adoptive father, living in a household of trauma, feeling emotionally disconnected, verbal abuse and the wounds that don’t go away, embracing vulnerability and learning how to connect, writing and processing old, longstanding anger, sharing manuscripts with family before publication, the response to our narratives from siblings and parents, fighting for our voice and agency, learning to help ourselves, being accountable, and the 10-year process of writing his new memoir Pretend They Are Dead.

Also in this episode:

-not giving up

-finding your writing space and time

-writing without boundaries 

 

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt

-Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

-The Great Santini by Pat Conroy

-Stay True by Hua Hsa

 

Steven Scott Eichenblatt is a graduate of Florida State University and the University of Florida College of Law. A practicing attorney with Page and Eichenblatt, and father of five, he has spent over thirty years advocating for children as a pro bono guardian ad litem and representing families of first responders killed on 9/11. He lives with his wife, Melissa Ross, in Orlando, Florida.

 

Connect with Steve:

Website: www.stevenscotteichenblatt.com

 

Ronit’s upcoming 10-week online memoir course: https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

 

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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

Dr. Camille U. Adams joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about generations of mothers choosing to unmother their children, colonial violence in Trinidad and Tobago, stifling relationships, cognitive dissonance, finding the psychological, emotional, and geographical distance we need, narcissism and the golden child, not wanting to tell the story we ultimately find a way to tell, being a poet first, retracting and pulling back to get close to ourselves and write, exigence in memoir, going no contact with family, cocooning ourselves, finding support systems that work, getting into literary magazines, how content creates form, and her 300-page poem How To Be Unmothered: a Trinidadian memoir.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

 

Also in this episode:

-the narcissist’s nest

-using elements of fiction

-trusting yourself

 

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Thick and Other Essays by Dr. Tressie McMillam Cottom

-Ordinary Girls by Jaquira Diaz

-Brother, I’m Dying by Edwidge Danticat

-Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward

-The Dragon Can’t Dance by Earl Lovelace

-The Hurting Kind by Ada Limon

 

Dr. Camille U. Adams is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Camille is the author of the memoir, How To Be Unmothered: a Trinidadian memoir, released August 2025 with Restless Books. Her manuscript was recognised as a finalist in the Restless Books Prize in New Immigrant Writing 2023. Camille earned her MFA in Poetry from City College, CUNY and a Ph.D. in Creative Nonfiction from FSU. She has been awarded Best of The Net - nonfiction 2024, and has received five Pushcart Prize nominations, three Best of the Net nominations, and recognition for a notable essay in Best American Essays 2022. Among Camille’s awarded fellowships is an inaugural Tin House Reading Fellowship, an inaugural Granta nature writing workshop fellowship, an inaugural Anaphora Arts Italy Writing Retreat Fellowship, a McKnight Doctoral Fellowship, a Community of Writers Erica Ellner Memorial Scholarship, and a Roots Wounds Words Fellowship. Additionally, Camille is a Tin House alum and has received support from Kenyon Writers Workshop, VONA, and others. She has served as a juried reader for Tin House for two consecutive years, as a CNF editor at Variant Lit, and as an assistant editor at Split Lip Magazine and at The Account. Camille currently lives in Brooklyn where she teaches and is hard at work on book two. 

 

Connect with Camille:

Website: www.camilleuadams.com

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

Twitter: https://x.com/camille_u_adams

Threads: https://www.threads.com/@camille_u_adams

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/camilleuadams.bsky.social

 

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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