166. What’s Ours to Tell featuring Julie Brill
Let’s Talk Memoir29 Huhti 2025

166. What’s Ours to Tell featuring Julie Brill

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

Jaksot(237)

12. Making Your Manuscript Shimmer featuring Laura Davis

12. Making Your Manuscript Shimmer featuring Laura Davis

Laura Davis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about creating tension, writing for ourselves versus an audience, moving from the personal to the universal, trusting your reader, and the gift o...

24 Touko 202250min

11. Yes, Your Writing Has Value featuring Paulette Perhach

11. Yes, Your Writing Has Value featuring Paulette Perhach

Paulette Perhach joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about why it’s okay to see writing as a business, balancing both grace and accountability in our work, the importance of a writing community...

17 Touko 202228min

10. The Merits of Writing About Trauma with Restraint featuring Kelly Sundberg

10. The Merits of Writing About Trauma with Restraint featuring Kelly Sundberg

Kelly Sundberg joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about sharing her story of domestic violence with the world, depicting trauma and triggering events in memoir, the alchemical value of PTSD, n...

10 Touko 202230min

9. Writing About Our Children featuring Debi Lewis

9. Writing About Our Children featuring Debi Lewis

Debi Lewis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation on best practices for writing about our children, navigating the medical memoir, positioning books to make them appealing to publishers, and how s...

3 Touko 202230min

8. A Conversation with Writing and Publishing Expert Jane Friedman

8. A Conversation with Writing and Publishing Expert Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the most common craft issues she sees in memoir manuscripts, what writers often misunderstand about the industry, The Big Five, how to wr...

26 Huhti 202237min

7. Writing Your Story for Yourself featuring Melissa Gould

7. Writing Your Story for Yourself featuring Melissa Gould

Melissa Gould joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how writing was a way back to herself after she became a widow unexpectedly and at a young age, making the jump from screenwriting to non...

19 Huhti 202230min

6. Not Too Soon, Not Too Much: Stories That Insist on Being Told featuring Meg Weber

6. Not Too Soon, Not Too Much: Stories That Insist on Being Told featuring Meg Weber

Meg Weber joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about knowing when the right time is to tell your story, approaching loved ones about scenes in your memoir featuring graphic sex and kink, why com...

12 Huhti 202235min

5. Doing Whatever it Takes to Get Yourself to Write featuring Andrea Ross

5. Doing Whatever it Takes to Get Yourself to Write featuring Andrea Ross

Andrea Ross joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about battling memoir imposter syndrome, choosing scene over exposition, doing whatever it takes to get yourself to write, and how she used the w...

5 Huhti 202232min

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