163. Losing Mothers and Finding Them Again Through Memoir featuring Rebe Huntman

Vicky Nguyen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up Vietnamese in America and what this country has meant for someone like her, writing memoir as a public figure, pivoting as a writer, not being too quick to self-edit, managing backstory to keep a memoir propulsive, having conversations with loved ones about shared family history, connecting through vulnerability, book promotion as a whole other job, exhausting every marketing channel, writing about people who don’t necessarily want to be in our memoirs, how we “rememoir” things, digging deep, and her new memoir Boat Baby. Also in this episode: -when family remembers things differently  -writing in our voice -anti-immigrant sentiment in the U.S.   Books mentioned in this episode: -Born a Crime by Trevor Noah -Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen -The Manicurist’s Daughter by Susan Lieu -Sigh, Gone by Phuc Tran -The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls -The Writer by James Patterson   Vicky is an NBC News senior consumer investigative correspondent and anchor of NBC News Daily. She reports for the Today show, Nightly News with Lester Holt and NBC News Now. She graduated as valedictorian from the University of San Francisco. Vicky lives in New York with her husband and three daughters. Her parents are always nearby. Connect with Vicky: Website: https://www.vickynguyen.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/vickynguyentv Get Boat Baby: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Boat-Baby/Vicky-Nguyen/9781668025567 – 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

15 Touko 41min

KB Brookins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about transness, masculinity, and race, how how being a writer has crystalized their experience and made it legible to an audience and to themselves, turning to prose to say the hard things, the tenacity of memoir, resisting erasure and pushing back on toxic systems, coming at creative nonfiction from a poetic impulse, having patience with ourselves, what we might need to let go of as writers, looking at our work with kinder eyes, the way we treat people because of gender, and their multi-themed memoir Pretty. Also in this episode: -stages of grief -permission to have anger -when lines for genre aren’t as helpful   Books mentioned in this episode: -Asatta: An Autobiography by Asatta Shakur -Black Boy by Richard Wright -Heavy by Kiese Laymon KB Brookins is a Black queer and trans writer, cultural worker, and visual artist from Texas. KB’s chapbook How To Identify Yourself with a Wound won the Saguaro Poetry Prize, a Writer’s League of Texas Discovery Prize, and a Stonewall Honor Book Award. Their debut poetry collection Freedom House won the American Library Association Barbara Gittings Literature Award and the Texas Institute of Letters Award for the Best First Book of Poetry. KB’s debut memoir Pretty, released in May 2024 with Alfred A. Knopf, won the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award in Creative Non-Fiction.   Connect with KB: Website: https://earthtokb.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/earthtokb TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@earthtokb Substack: https://substack.com/@earthtokb Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/earthtokb.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/earthtokb Get the book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/724994/pretty-by-kb-brookins/ – 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

13 Touko 41min

Michelle Yang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her bipolar diagnosis and becoming a mental health advocate, immigrating to the U.S. as a young child, writing at the intersection of body image, mental health, and Asian American identity, building an author platform, revisiting old family dynamics and patterns, grieving a family of origin, mourning make-believe mothers, doing a lot of processing before writing about trauma, keeping the reader in mind, removing societal stigma around serious mental health diagnoses, how she survived and found hope, and her new memoir Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love.   Also in this episode: -keeping strict boundaries -writing in short digestible chapters -revising a manuscript from past to present tense   Books mentioned in this episode:  -Relative Strangers by A.H. Kim -Educated by Tara Westover -Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo and Me by Ellen Forney -Rock Steady by Ellen Forney  -I’m Telling the Truth But I’m Lying by Bassey Ikpi -The Body Papers by Grace Talusan -Hunger by Roxane Gay -What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo   Michelle Yang is an advocate whose writings on the intersection of Asian American identity, body image, and mental health have been featured in NBC News, CNN, InStyle, and Reader’s Digest. Michelle has also been featured on NPR, Washington Post, and The Seattle Times for her advocacy. She loves exploring new parts of her new home state of Michigan with her family and smoking up the kitchen with spicy recipes. Her new memoir is Phoenix Girl: How a Fat Asian with Bipolar Found Love. You can find her on michelleyangwriter.com or on Instagram @michelleyangwriter. Connect with Michelle: Website: michelleyangwriter.com Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/michelleyangwriter/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michelleyangwriter   – 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

6 Touko 52min

Julie Brill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up the daughter of a Holocaust survivor and her journey to understand the unexamined childhood stories she grew up with, being a reluctant memoirist and leaning into telling the story of an ordinary person figuring things out, the Holocaust and the history of the Jews of Serbia, inherited memories, making ourselves the central character, when our parents’  foundational stories become ours, finding our place, permission to tell a story if you didn’t live through it, and her new memoir HIdden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia.   Also in this episode: -the missing missing -the unthought known -making research readable   Books mentioned in this episode: Three Minutes in Poland by Glenn Kertz Paper Love by Sarah Wildman Plunder by Menachem Kaiser Big Magic by Liz Gilbert The Creative Process by Twyla Tharp   As a child, Julie Brill held two conflicting beliefs. She knew Germans had murdered her Jewish grandfather in occupied Yugoslavia, yet she somehow believed the Holocaust had never come to his hometown of Belgrade. The family anecdotes her father passed down, a blend of his early memories and what his mother told him, didn’t match what Julie had heard about Germany, Poland, and Anne Frank in Holland during World War II. Even frequent readers of Holocaust history likely do not understand the Serbian story. Destruction there came early and fast. Without cattle cars, gas chambers, or distant camps, the Nazis murdered almost the entire Jewish population before the plan for the Final Solution was even set. With so few Jewish survivors and descendants from Serbia, the story of the Shoah there has gone untold. Julie’s quest to understand and share what she learned led to Hidden in Plain Sight: A Family Memoir and the Untold Story of the Holocaust in Serbia. Julie has written for Haaretz, the Forward, Kveller, The Times of Israel, Balkan Insight, and elsewhere. She shares her family’s experiences in the Holocaust in middle and high school classrooms through Living Links.  Additionally, Julie is a lactation consultant, doula, childbirth educator, and the author of the anthology Round the Circle: Doulas Share Their Experiences. She began attending births and teaching childbirth classes in 1992 and has supported thousands of families in the childbearing year. She graduated from Tufts University with a degree in Sociology and Gender Studies and completed the Massachusetts Midwifery Alliance Apprenticeship Course. She is the mother of two adult daughters.   Connect with Julie: Website: https://juliebrill.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/juliesbrill/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/juliebrill.bsky.social Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/julie.brill1 X: https://www.Twitter.com/juliebrill8 Get her book: https://mybook.to/irl0   – 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

29 Huhti 33min

Margaret Anne Mary Moore joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her realization at an early age that she wanted to be a nonfiction writer and memoirist, facing severe discrimination as a child with disabilities, how she wrote about her disability experience on a granular level, using a communication device, taking breaks to work on other aspects of a project when the writing process grows tiresome, devoting chapters to a single theme, striving to make characterizations rich in detail, looking at rejection juxtaposed against life circumstances, how traumatic memories get seared into our memory, compassion and acceptance, and her memoir Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood's Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss.   Margaret’s Brevity blog article link: https://brevity.wordpress.com/2024/12/23/who-gets-a-spot-on-the-river/   Also in this episode: -hermit crab forms -writing sharp scenes -embodied writing   Books mentioned in this episode: The Mindful Writer by Dinty W. Moore The Shell Game by Kim Adrian Congratulations, Who Are You Again? by Harrison Scott Key   Margaret Anne Mary Moore is the author of the bestselling disability memoir Bold, Brave, and Breathless: Reveling in Childhood's Splendiferous Glories While Facing Disability and Loss (Woodhall Press, 2023) and is currently writing the sequel. She is a summer 2022 graduate of Fairfield University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, where she earned a degree in creative nonfiction and poetry. Margaret is an editor and the marketing coordinator at Woodhall Press and an ambassador for PRC-Saltillo. A featured book on the AWP Bookshelf, Bold, Brave, and Breathless is her debut book. She is a contributor to Gina Barreca’s book Fast Famous Women: 75 Essays of Flash Nonfiction (Woodhall Press, 2025). Her writing has appeared in America Magazine, Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog, and Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, Independent Catholic News among other publications.    Connect with Margaret: Website: margaretannemarymoore.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margaretannemarymooreauthor/ X: https://x.com/mooreofawriter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/margaretannemarymoore_author LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-moore-m-f-a-86835312a/ Good Reads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/29567595.Margaret_Anne_Mary_Moore Book: https://a.co/d/b0VZ8Mk   – 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

22 Huhti 31min

Diana Raab joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about connecting with ancestors and tuning into their guidance, books that need to be written, when publisher requests don’t resonate with us, adding prompts for readers, unwanted daughters and intergenerational trauma, how books we don’t like help us, adding prompts for readers, tapping into authentic voice, and her new book Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors.   Also in this episode:  -reading broadly  -surviving cancer multiple times -how trauma manifests later in life   Book mentioned in this episode: This Boys Life by Tobias Wolff Paula by Isabel Allende Fierce Attachments by Vivian Gornick  Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo  Poet Warrior by Joy Harjo   Diana Raab, MFA, PhD, is a poet, memoirist, workshop leader, thought-leader and award-winning author of fourteen books. Her work has been widely published and anthologized. Her poems have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and The Best of the Net. She frequently speaks and writes on writing for healing and transformation. Her 14th and newest book is Hummingbird: Messages from My Ancestors, A memoir with reflection and writing prompts (2024).Raab writes for Psychology Today, The Good Men Project, Sixty and Me, Thrive Global, and is a guest writer for many others.    Connect with Diana: Website: https://www.dianaraab.com Forthcoming poetry anthology: https://gunpowderpress.com/product/women-in-a-golden-state/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dianaraab/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-raab-phd-a1850911/ Facebook (Author): https://www.facebook.com/DianaRaab.Author/ Facebook (Diana M Raab): https://www.facebook.com/diana.m.raab/ Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/512931.Diana_Raab YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/dianaraab1 Diana’s monthly newsletter: https://dianaraab.com/signup/ – 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

17 Huhti 25min

Bridgett M. Davis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the effect of trauma and weathering on Black lives, the unique bond between sisters, showing relationships in action and dialogue, homing in on a throughline, giving our books and writing the space they need,finding patterns and switching lenses, exploring varying lived experiences within family structures, shedding light on Lupus, the physiological effects of systemic racism, Black maternal mortality, moments of heartbreak, asking important narrative questions early on, the letters her sister wrote to her, and her new memoir Love, Rita.   Also in this episode: -birth order -getting a book optioned or film -shifting points of view   Books mentioned in this episode: -The Situations and the Story by Vivian Gornick -Inventing the Truth by William Zisner -The Yellow House by Sarah  -Memorial Drive by Natasha Tretheway -The Invisible Kingdom by Megan O’Rourke -Fairy Land by Alisha Abbott -Gather Me by Glory Adams   Bridgett M. Davis (pronounced Brih-jet) is the author of the memoir, Love, Rita, published by Harper Books in spring 2025.Her first memoir, The World According To Fannie Davis: My Mother’s Life In The Detroit Numbers, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice, a 2020 Michigan Notable Book, named a Best Book of 2019 by Kirkus Reviews, BuzzFeed, NBC News and Parade Magazine, and featured as a clue on the quiz show Jeopardy! The upcoming film adaptation will be produced by Plan B Entertainment and released by Searchlight Pictures. She is author of two novels, Into the Go-Slow, named a Best Book of 2014 by The San Francisco Chronicle, and Shifting Through Neutral, shortlisted for the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Legacy Award. Davis is also writer/director of the 1996 award-winning feature film Naked Acts, newly restored and released to critical acclaim, screening in theaters across the US and globally and now available on DVD, Blu Ray and select streaming services. Davis is Professor Emerita in the journalism department at Baruch College and the CUNY Graduate Center, where she has taught creative, narrative and film writing. Her essays have appeared most recently in The New York Times, the LA Times and The Washington Post, among other publications. A graduate of Spelman College and Columbia Journalism School, she lives in Brooklyn with her family. Visit her website at www.bridgettdavis.com.\ Connect with Bridgett: Website: bridgettdavis.com Facebook: bridgettdavis Bluesky: bridgettmdavis.bsky.social IG: https://www.instagram.com/bridgett_d substack: bridgettmdavis.substack.com Links for book purchase: https://www.harpercollins.com/products/love-rita-bridgett-m-davis?variant=43263953174562 Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/love-rita-a-sister-s-story-bridgett-m-davis/21696108   – 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

8 Huhti 39min