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)

73. Putting Child Loss into Words featuring Eileen Vorbach Collins

73. Putting Child Loss into Words featuring Eileen Vorbach Collins

Eileen Vorbach Collins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her young daughter to suicide and the essays she wrote as she contended with her loss, the role of reflection, change, an...

6 Helmi 202434min

72. The Leaving Season featuring Kelly McMasters

72. The Leaving Season featuring Kelly McMasters

Kelly McMasters joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the elusiveness of “home”, creating space for our children in our art, questions as writing tools, letting go of what we thought our li...

30 Tammi 202443min

71. Memoir on Stage featuring Jamie Brickhouse

71. Memoir on Stage featuring Jamie Brickhouse

Jamie Brickhouse joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing and teaching memoir, performing and telling stories, alcoholism and life as a sober artist, being a 5-time Moth StorySLAM winn...

23 Tammi 202440min

70. Saying Goodbye and Why We Write About the Hard Things featuring Morgan Baker

70. Saying Goodbye and Why We Write About the Hard Things featuring Morgan Baker

Morgan Baker joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about motherhood and identity, giving back to ourselves and creating boundaries, confronting depression, worrying about our memoir’s structure l...

18 Tammi 202434min

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

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...

16 Tammi 202451min

68. Building Bylines, Crafting Book Proposals, and Pursuing Editors featuring Dina Gachman

68. Building Bylines, Crafting Book Proposals, and Pursuing Editors featuring Dina Gachman

Dina Gachman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about ambiguous loss, taking risks on the page, writing about family, connecting with and pursuing editors, her approach to building bylines and...

9 Tammi 202434min

67. The Stories Landscapes Hold and the Presence of Absence featuring Pamela Petro

67. The Stories Landscapes Hold and the Presence of Absence featuring Pamela Petro

Pamela Petro joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the stories landscapes hold, why she resisted memoir and how she ultimately put herself on the page despite trying hard not to, pushing ou...

2 Tammi 202447min

Dear Let’s Talk Memoir listeners,

Dear Let’s Talk Memoir listeners,

Thank you for such a great year! Very grateful for your kind words, downloads, and reviews. You are cordially invited to share your feedback.  Help shape upcoming Let’s Talk Memoir content - a brief s...

27 Joulu 20233min

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