Memoir Nation

This week’s episode is a timely one—an interview with Jose Antonio Vargas, who outed himself as an undocumented immigrant when he started his nonprofit, Define American. His memoir is Dear America, which was updated last year to include new material for living in Trump’s America. In this interview, Jose shares his experiences with ICE and being undocumented in this country, as well as his insights on the Black/white binary, the construction of race, and so much more. We recorded this episode the day after International Human Rights Day—and Jose’s interview, book, and experience gives voice to the realities of who is being targeted by our draconian immigration policies and how it feels. An important listen. Jose Antonio Vargas is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Emmy-nominated filmmaker, and Tony-nominated theatrical producer. A leading voice for the human rights of immigrants, he founded the nonprofit immigrant storytelling organization Define American, and he explores all facets of immigration as host of its YouTube show and podcast Define American with Jose Antonio Vargas. His best-selling memoir, Dear America: Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, was published in 2018, with an updated edition in 2025. His second book, White Is Not a Country, will examine America's foundational Black and White racial binary, and where everyone else fits within and outside that binary.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Memoir Nation is ringing in the new year with some of our greatest hits. We’ve gone into the archives and chosen a clip from a handful of our favorite guests over the years. Listening to each of these memoirists speak about memoir, writing, and the gifts and challenges of the genre is so inspiring—and we hope this hour of insight will be some fuel for your own writing tank. We’re in the first week of our JanYourStory free writing challenge, and it’s not too late to join. Come check out the Community tab on MemoirNation.com. Mary Karr, Jeannette Walls, Kiese Laymon, Abigail Thomas, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ashley C. Ford, Firoorzeh Dumas, Dani Shapiro, Ingrid Rojas Contreras, and Maggie Smith are all extraordinary memoirists who’ve graced our show in the past eight years. Check out their books, their social media, and their interviews in our archives. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

JanYourStory is starting this week! And since this show falls at the end of 2025 and the beginning of 2026, Grant and Brooke are picking up from where they left off last week (how to start) to focus on how to keep going. Questions of fear and readiness (or lack thereof) are addressed, but the primary message of this week’s show is that if you say you want to write a memoir, you can and you will. That said, we all need some tricks and tips, some accountability and community, and a little bit of spirit and magic, too. Tune in and write with Memoir Nation in January, too! Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner are the cohosts of the Memoir Nation podcast and the cofounders of Memoir Nation, which is hosting the inaugural writing challenge, JanYourStory, running January 1-31, 2026. Join us here.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week we’re in full prep mode to write write write in January for our JanYourStory writing challenge. With that in mind, Brooke and and Grant tackle beginnings. How to start isn’t limited to how to get started. Starting involves starting to write each day, and how to start thinking about writing, and ways to start a memoir. We talk about all this and more, with an eye on the new year and throwing down a lot of content in January. Let’s go!Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner are the cohosts of the Memoir Nation podcast and the cofounders of Memoir Nation, which is hosting the inaugural writing challenge, JanYourStory, running January 1-31, 2026. Join us here.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 interview with the cofounders of SheWrites.com, Kamy Wicoff and Deborah Siegel-Acevedo, is especially touching for Brooke because these two women are where it all started. This week’s interview is about why community matters as told through the histories and sensibilities of two community champions who started something that lit the literary world on fire in 2009. SheWrites back then was a little bit like Substack is today, but with small breakout groups and a lot of meet-ups happening in the real world. The feminist sensibility of SheWrites was what drew Brooke to the platform, and to Kamy and Deborah in those early days when she was a Senior and then Executive Editor at Seal Press—and this origin story is both a walk down memory lane and an inspiring episode on the enduring power of community. Kamy Wicoff is a writer, former publisher, and psychotherapist with a degree in social work. Kamy holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from Columbia and is the author of several books, including the novel Wishful Thinking and the nonfiction book I Do But I Don’t: Why the Way We Marry Matters, and has contributed to multiple anthologies, most recently Feminists Reclaim Mentorship: An Anthology. Kamy is the cofounder of She Writes Press. She serves as a trustee on the board of the Brooklyn Public Library and lives with her husband and their four sons in Brooklyn. Deborah Siegel-Acevedo, PhD is a Visiting Scholar in Gender & Sexuality Studies at Northwestern University and the author of Sisterhood, Interrupted and co-editor of the literary anthology Only Child. She is a regular on Chicago’s “live lit” storytelling stages. Deborah’s essay “My Husband, the Reluctant Barista” just appeared this past October in the Modern Love column at The New York Times. Her op-eds and essays on gender, motherhood, family, feminism, and writing have appeared in Slate, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, and elsewhere. She’s a TEDx speaker, a longtime coach and champion of writers, and her coaching company, Girl Meets Voice, Inc., has supported hundreds of established and emerging writers. Together, they cofounded SheWrites.com in 2009. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.