169. Boat Baby featuring Vicky Nguyen
Let’s Talk Memoir15 Touko 2025

169. Boat Baby featuring Vicky Nguyen

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

Jaksot(241)

23. The Acceptance of Imperfection featuring Kathy Curto

23. The Acceptance of Imperfection featuring Kathy Curto

Kathy Curto joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about accepting imperfection in our writing,  the effect of time and distance in our work, finding beauty even in the painful, what she’s learned...

3 Tammi 202341min

22. Writing a Memoir About The Mother Who Betrayed You featuring Author Laura Davis

22. Writing a Memoir About The Mother Who Betrayed You featuring Author Laura Davis

Celebrated author and memoir teacher Laura Davis joins Let’sTalk Memoir for a special holiday episode for a conversation about writing her memoir The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Stor...

27 Joulu 20221h 25min

21. Inside Passage: The Waterfield Sisters on Their Fractured Childhood and the Redemptive Power of Memoir and Music featuring Keema Waterfield and Tekla Waterfield

21. Inside Passage: The Waterfield Sisters on Their Fractured Childhood and the Redemptive Power of Memoir and Music featuring Keema Waterfield and Tekla Waterfield

Keema and Tekla Waterfield join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being raised by a young single mother in Southeast Alaska after their father left the family. With very little money but a pa...

20 Joulu 202252min

20. No Job for a Man featuring John Ross Bowie

20. No Job for a Man featuring John Ross Bowie

John Ross Bowie joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about working in Hollywood, mental health, the patterns we discover in our lives and write about, grappling with shame, coming to terms with ...

13 Joulu 202243min

19. Writing About Family Secrets featuring Isidra Mencos

19. Writing About Family Secrets featuring Isidra Mencos

Isidra Mencos joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about setting her coming-of-age memoir against the backdrop of Spain’s cultural upheaval after the death of Franco, balancing personal narrativ...

6 Joulu 202238min

18. Crafting a Braided Memoir featuring Jamie Gehring

18. Crafting a Braided Memoir featuring Jamie Gehring

Jamie Gehring joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her braided memoir Madman in the Woods which details her and her family’s experience living next to Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, how she inco...

29 Marras 202238min

17. The Role of the Reflective Narrator featuring Lily Dunn

17. The Role of the Reflective Narrator featuring Lily Dunn

Lily Dunn joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the impact her father leaving to follow the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh had on her childhood, when she knew it was time to write her memoir S...

22 Marras 202233min

16. Voice First featuring Sonya Huber

16. Voice First featuring Sonya Huber

Sonya Huber joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about structure and time in memoir, the challenge of getting to the core of who we are and facing ourselves on the page, how her perspective on “...

15 Marras 202231min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
psykopodiaa-podcast
adhd-podi
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
rss-narsisti
rss-rahamania
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-psykalab
rss-tietoinen-yhteys-podcast-2
rss-vapaudu-voimaasi
kesken
psykologia
rss-valo-minussa-2
rss-niinku-asia-on
rss-lasnaolon-hetkia-mindfulness-tutuksi
puhutaan-koiraa
filocast-filosofian-perusteet
rss-monarch-talk-with-alexandra-alexis
rss-luonnollinen-synnytys-podcast