157. The Boundaries and Distance We Need to Tell Certain Stories featuring Paula Delgado-Kling
Let’s Talk Memoir13 Maalis 2025

157. The Boundaries and Distance We Need to Tell Certain Stories featuring Paula Delgado-Kling

Paula Delgado-Kling joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how her research and reporting on child soldiers, drug trafficking, and the revolutionary armed forces of Columbia (FARC) led her to tell the story of one woman and her family, the relationships we forge with whom we write about, allowing memoir to answer our questions, negotiating language barriers and class differences, coming to truth and understanding, grounding ourselves, hitting upon the structure a book needs, searching for humanity amidst ongoing violence, and her new book Leonor: The Story of a Lost Childhood.

Also in this episode:

-working as a journalist

-becoming embedded in the story we’re covering

-negotiating dangerous environments to gather information

Books mentioned in this episode:

Tastes Like War by Grace M. Cho

It can take a really long time but that doesn’t mean it isn’t important or good.

Paula Delgado-Kling holds degrees in comparative literature/French civilizations, international affairs, and creative writing from Brown University, Columbia University, and The New School, respectively. Leonor, for which she received two grants from the Canadian Council for the Arts, is her first book. Excerpts of this book have appeared in Narrative, The Literary Review, Pacifica Literary Review, and Happano.org in Japan. Her work for the Mexican monthly news magazine Gatopardo was nominated for the Simon Bolivar Award, Colombia’s top journalism prize, and anthologized in Las Mejores Crónicas de Gatopardo (Random House Mondadori, 2006). Born in Bogota, Colombia and raised in Toronto, Canada, Delgado-Kling now splits her time between Boca Raton, FL and New York City. To learn more, please visit PaulaDelgadoKling.com or follow her on Instagram @PaulaDelgadoKling.

Connect with Paula

Website: http://pauladelgadokling.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091961238236

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ColombiaTalk

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

Get the book: https://www.amazon.com/Leonor-Story-Childhood-Paula-Delgado-Kling/dp/1682194477?crid=1M4ML48WOEEV7&keywords=leonor&qid=1683308327&s=books&sprefix=leonor,stripbooks,97&sr=1-1&linkCode=sl1&tag=ongoicom-20&linkId=986106192c06afd126c43cfe6d22043d&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl

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.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

Subscribe to Ronit’s Substack: https://substack.com/@ronitplank

Follow Ronit:

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

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

https://bsky.app/profile/ronitplank.bsky.social

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Jaksot(237)

137. The Burden of Family Secrets featuring David Tereshchuk

137. The Burden of Family Secrets featuring David Tereshchuk

David Tereshchuk joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being drawn to journalism to help him cure the matter of unanswered questions in his own life, his early years living in the rural bor...

5 Joulu 202435min

136. The Wise Narrator on the Page featuring Rachel Zimmerman

136. The Wise Narrator on the Page featuring Rachel Zimmerman

Rachel Zimmerman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about rebuilding her family’s life after her husband’s death by suicide, the physical toll of grief, feeling like a doomed family, finding j...

3 Joulu 202447min

135. Reckoning with What We Need to Write and Learning to Stop Punishing Ourselves featuring Sarah LaBrie

135. Reckoning with What We Need to Write and Learning to Stop Punishing Ourselves featuring Sarah LaBrie

Sarah LaBrie joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the year her mom was diagnosed with schizophrenia and the legacy of mental illness in her family, rethinking ambitions in light of tragedy...

26 Marras 202429min

134. In Service of Your Story featuring Steve Hoffman

134. In Service of Your Story featuring Steve Hoffman

Steve Hoffman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about not getting sidetracked from the story you want to tell, the difference between accuracy and truth, coming to terms with who you are, how...

19 Marras 202438min

133. Breaking Through Internal Barricades and Going Deep featuring Seth Lorinczi

133. Breaking Through Internal Barricades and Going Deep featuring Seth Lorinczi

Seth Lorinczi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about going from a state of deep hiding to deep sharing, untangling the scars of the Holocaust and world wars through psychedelics, how ancestr...

14 Marras 202445min

132. Writing Lyrically About the Perceptual Richness of Altered Sight featuring Naomi Cohn

132. Writing Lyrically About the Perceptual Richness of Altered Sight featuring Naomi Cohn

Naomi Cohn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about becoming legally blind in mid-life and how that changed her writing process, going from poetry to lyric essay, falling in love with Braille,...

12 Marras 202452min

131. Legitimizing Our Own Experience Through Memoir featuring Anne Pinkerton

131. Legitimizing Our Own Experience Through Memoir featuring Anne Pinkerton

Anne Pinkerton joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about processing the loss of her older brother David, how brothers and sisters get short shrift when it comes to grief in our culture, her Wri...

7 Marras 202447min

130. Writing Memoir As a Mother-Daughter Team featuring Dorothy and Rachel Leland

130. Writing Memoir As a Mother-Daughter Team featuring Dorothy and Rachel Leland

Dorothy and Rachel Leland join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about Rachel’s battle with Lyme disease beginning at 13 years old, controversial medical diagnoses, advocating for treatment, living...

5 Marras 202440min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
psykopodiaa-podcast
rss-narsisti
adhd-podi
aamukahvilla
rss-rahamania
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
rss-koira-haudattuna
rahapuhetta
rss-vapaudu-voimaasi
rss-eron-alkemiaa
psykologia
rss-the-leafy-lounge
rss-niinku-asia-on
rss-uskonto-on-tylsaa
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-valo-minussa-2
rss-turun-yliopisto
rss-tietoinen-yhteys-podcast-2