248. Forgiving Our Younger Selves featuring Courney Kocak

Courtney Kocak joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her Hollywood misadventures, facing coercion and exploitation as a young woman, systemic structures we bump up against, fighting the patriarchy, having compassion for the girl she was, landing on essays as a place to stretch out on the page, not terrorizing the people we write about, making dialogue feel alive, book incubators, engaging with other writers and finding community, writing as a means to create opportunities for ourselves, forgiving our younger selves, writing our own rules, taking power back, and her new memoir Girl Gone Wild.

Ronit's upcoming workshop: Writing Dynamic Memoir: From Lived Experience to Gripping Story https://www.lmcmurtrylitcenter.org/workshops/writing-dynamic-memoir-from-lived-experience-to-gripping-story

Also in this episode: - being objectified - deadlines and accountability - small presses as champions for innovative memoir

Books mentioned in this episode: - Draft Number 4 by John Mcphee - Finger Exercises for Poets by Dorianne Laux - Wild by Cheryl Strayed - Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Stayed - The Wager by David Grann

Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian who splits time between Austin and Los Angeles. She wrote for Amazon’s Emmy-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know It All. She’s produced a slew of highly-ranked podcasts and currently hosts three of her own with over two million downloads to date: Private Parts Unknown, about love and sexuality around the world, The Bleeders, about book writing and publishing, and Podcast Bestie, a best friend to podcasters trying to grow and monetize their shows (and a popular Substack). As a writer, her bylines include The New York Times, The Cut, The Washington Post, LA Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, HuffPost, and more. Her debut memoir, Girl Gone Wild, with Trio House Press, is out now!

Connect with Courtney:

Website: https://www.courtneykocak.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/courtneykocak/ Threads: https://www.threads.com/@courtneykocak Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/courtneykocak.bsky.social Twitter: https://x.com/courtneykocak

Purchase Book via Bookshop:

Girl Gone Wild on Bookshop.org: https://bookshop.org/a/85623/9781949487541 Teaching: https://www.courtneykocak.com/teaching

- Ronit Plank bio and links: Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has appeared in The Atlantic, Poets & Writers, River Teeth’s Beautiful Things, The Rumpus, Salon, Hippocampus, The New York Times, and elsewhere, earning Best of the Net, Best Microfiction, and multiple Pushcart Prize nominations. Her memoir When She Comes Back was a Book Riot Best True Crime Book and Kirkus Reviews calls it, “An intimate, intuitive, emotionally vivid family account that finds hope in reconciliation". Ronit is also the author of the award-winning short story collection Home is a Made-Up Place, and her work has been anthologized in Selected Memories, Vol. 2: 15 Years of Hippocampus Magazine and Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage. Ronit is the Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, teaches memoir at a host of venues including the University of Washington’s Continuum Program, Antioch University, and 92NY’s Roundtable, and is host of the podcast Let’s Talk Memoir and the Substack Let’s Talk Memoir. Find her on social media @ronitplank Website: www.ronitplank.com Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ When She Comes Back: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/