96. Memoir Through A Mythic Lens featuring Maureen Murdock

Maureen Murdock joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how myths help excavate our stories, memoir as a way to reclaim the past, invisible primary patterns in the psyche, letting ourselves meander and reflect, using process journals to excavate fears about being vulnerable, allowing structure to emerge, a favorite prompt of hers, and her latest book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir

Books mentioned in this episode:

• Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas
• The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion
• The Color of Water by James McBride
• Smile by Sarah Ruhl
• Know My Name by Chanel Miller
• Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson
• The Tender Bar by J.R. Moehringer

Maureen Murdock, Ph.D. is the author of her new book Mythmaking: Self-Discovery and the Timeless Art of Memoir and the author of the best-selling book, The Heroine’s Journey, which explores the rich territory of the feminine psyche and has been translated into twenty languages. Maureen is also author of Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory; Fathers’ Daughters: Breaking the Ties that Bind; Spinning Inward: Using Guided Imagery with Children; and The Heroine’s Journey Workbook. She is the editor of an anthology entitled Monday Morning Memoirs: Women in the Second Half of Life and teaches memoir for the International Women’s Writing Guild and in Pacifica Graduate Institute’s program, Writing Down the Soul. Maureen was Chair and Core Faculty of the M.A. Counseling Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She has written pieces for the Huffington Post on criminal justice and volunteers for the Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) with inmates at Lompoc Federal Prison.

Connect with Maureen:

Website: www.maureenmurdock.com

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

Facebook: www.facebook.com/maureen.murdock/author

Get Maureen’s Book: https://www.shambhala.com/mythmaking.html

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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

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers