217. Writing Real Sex in Memoir featuring Sarah Gallucci

Sarah Gallucci joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being the child of a teen mom and early influences on ideas of love and relationships, pivoting from journalism to reporting on her own life, the hey day of mommy blogging, when relationships become incredibly messy, how we experience pleasure, manipulative, coercive, and nonconsensual sex, giving a partner a hall pass, measuring the brokenness of a marriage, writing when you’re in the thick of it, the aftermath of divorce, why writing real sex is imperative to literature, the autonomy of self-publishing, when family stops speaking to us after publication, strategies to writing about sex, and Laid: A Memoir of Love, Sex, and Marriage.

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:

-trusting your truth

-blogging and going viral

-writing from a raw, unprocessed place

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Hunger by Roxanne Gay

-Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay

-Wild by Cheryl Strayed

-Push by Sapphire

Sarah Gallucci is the author of Laid: A Memoir of Love, Sex, and Marriage. She has written reported features for CNN, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, among others. Sarah works as a professor at Central Piedmont Community College in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is also a speaker, and has given two TEDx talks. Most importantly, Sarah is the mother of two with storytelling, creative healing, and pasta in her blood.

Connect with Sarah:

Website: www.SarahGallucci.com

Instagram: @_Sarah_Gallucci_

TikTok: @_Sarah_Gallucci_

Threads: @_Sarah_Gallucci_

Book: https://www.amazon.com/Laid-Memoir-Love-Sex-Marriage/dp/B0DVCBXVZ7/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0

Talks: https://www.sarahgallucci.com/speaking

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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.

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