69. Complicated Family Legacies and Heaps of Material featuring Gretchen Cherington

Gretchen Cherington joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about complicated family legacies and processing sexual abuse, confronting the public view of a loved one we’re writing about, protecting manuscripts before we have book contracts, corralling information and organizing heaps of material, reading broadly, building relationships and being above board with sources, and her true crime, investigative, family memoir The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy.

-Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir

-Take the Let's Talk Memoir survey: https://forms.gle/mctvsv9MGvzDRn8D6

Help shape upcoming Let’s Talk Memoir content - a brief survey: https://forms.gle/ueQVu8YyaHNKui2Z9

Also in this episode:

-discovering an organizing principle

-knowing what material to cut

-reading like a memoirist

Books mentioned in this episode:

Searching for Mercy Street by Linda Gray Sexton

Home Before Dark by Susan Cheever

Small Fry by Lisa Jobs

Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by Nick Flynn

Just Kids by Patti Smith

Heavy by Kiese Laymon

Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson

Are You My Mother by Alison Bechdel

Queen of Snails: A Graphic Memoir by Maureen Burdock

Gretchen Cherington grew up the daughter of Pulitzer Prize–winning and U.S. poet laureate, Richard Eberhart. Her childhood homes were filled with literary greats from Robert Frost to Anne Sexton to James Dickey, a life she captured in her award-winning memoir, Poetic License. But like the paternal grandfather she never knew, Cherington chose a career in business where she coached hundreds of powerful men on how to change their companies and themselves. Her second book, The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy – a true crime, investigative, family memoir – is an exploration of the first twenty years of the meatpacking giant, Hormel Foods, as she pieces together her grandfather’s role—if he had one?—in a national embezzlement scandal that nearly brought the company to its knees in 1921. Cherington served as adjunct faculty in executive programs at Harvard, Dartmouth, and Columbia and on twenty boards of directors including a multibillion-dollar B-corporation bank. Cherington’s essays have appeared widely, in Huffington Post, Covey Club, Lit Hub, The Millions, Yankee, Electric Lit, Hippocampus, Quartz, and others. Her essay “Maine Roustabout” was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. Gretchen splits her time between Portland, Maine, and an eighty-year old cottage on Penobscot Bay.

Connect with Gretchen:

Website: www.gretchencherington.com

X: https://twitter.com/ge_cherington

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

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

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gretchen-cherington-612b3b7/

Get Gretchen’s Book: https://www.amazon.com/Butcher-Embezzler-Fall-Guy-Industry/dp/1647420830/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3QYT2DHA753BP&keywords=the+butcher%2C+the+embezzler%2C+and+the+fall+guy&qid=1673298988&sprefix=The+Butcher%2C+the+Embezz%2Caps%2C81&sr=8-1

Huffington Post: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/richard-eberhart-father-me-too_n_64068645e4b0c78bb74484e6

—

Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, 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 lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers