182. Rewriting a Story About Medical Trauma featuring Kate Gies
Let’s Talk Memoir8 Heinä 2025

182. Rewriting a Story About Medical Trauma featuring Kate Gies

Kate Gies joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the lasting effects of trauma on the body and mind, taking care of ourselves while writing by remembering our purpose, allowing early drafts to be angry and raw and finding meaning later, body shame and body acceptance, coming of age later in life, weaving together a medical narrative, protecting ourselves from reinjury by focusing on the larger message, writing where the energy is, finding boundaries, practicing self-compassion, and her memoir It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body.

Also in this episode:

-writing where the energy is

-giving yourself time

- writing in vignettes

Books mentioned in this episode:

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealey

The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso

Bluets by Maggie Nelson

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

The Sucide Index by Joan Wickersham

Kate Gies is a writer and educator living in Toronto. She teaches creative nonfiction and expressive arts at George Brown College. Her fiction, non-fiction, and poetry have been published in The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, the Best Canadian Essays 2024 Anthology, and other places.She is the author of It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body, which details her childhood medical experiences related to a missing ear. It was published by Simon & Schuster in February of 2025.

Connect with Kate:

Website: kategies.com

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

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/kategies.bsky.social

Get the Book: US: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/It-Must-Be-Beautiful-to-Be-Finished/Kate-Gies/9781668051054

Get the Book: Canada: https://www.amazon.ca/Must-Be-Beautiful-Finished-Memoir/dp/1668051052

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

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(263)

257. Unburdening Ourselves From Decades of Shame featuring Kim Murphy

257. Unburdening Ourselves From Decades of Shame featuring Kim Murphy

Kim Murphy joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about unburdening herself from decades of shame, her often absent and unpredictable mother, what we owe or don’t owe our parents at the end of the...

1 Syys 40min

256. The Catharsis of Memoir: From Resentment to Understanding featuring Jason Allen

256. The Catharsis of Memoir: From Resentment to Understanding featuring Jason Allen

Jason Allen joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up working poor on Eastern Long Island with an alcoholic father, the threat of different types of violence, his father’s quickness ...

25 Elo 46min

255. The Relief That Comes From Sharing the Toughest Thing featuring Dr. Kara Zivin

255. The Relief That Comes From Sharing the Toughest Thing featuring Dr. Kara Zivin

Dr. Kara Zivin joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about maternal mental health and her own her mental health crisis during pregnancy and postpartum, how she became a patient and professor in t...

18 Elo 42min

254. Writing the Hard Stuff featuring Nicole Walker

254. Writing the Hard Stuff featuring Nicole Walker

Nicole Walker joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how we talk about current traumas and past traumas in ways that don’t retraumatize us, making our work matter to others, giving ourselves...

11 Elo 34min

253. Getting to the Story Beneath the Story featuring D/Annie Liontas

253. Getting to the Story Beneath the Story featuring D/Annie Liontas

D/Annie Liontas joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about suffering 3 brain injuries in one year and how that changed their relationship to their body and to the world, post-concussive syndrome...

4 Elo 31min

252. Pulling Readers Inside Our Experience with Specificity and Particularity featuring Rachel Weaver

252. Pulling Readers Inside Our Experience with Specificity and Particularity featuring Rachel Weaver

Rachel Weaver joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the mysterious illness she lived with for nearly two decades, seeing 30-40 doctors and spending 18 years in the medical system, the toll ...

28 Heinä 37min

251. Mining Opening Pages for Impact featuring Deborah K. Shepherd

251. Mining Opening Pages for Impact featuring Deborah K. Shepherd

Deborah Shepherd joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the large age gap in her first marriage and having mixed feelings about the love story of her youth, the titillation of secrecy and hu...

21 Heinä 35min

250. Leaning into Bursts of Memory featuring Samina Najmi

250. Leaning into Bursts of Memory featuring Samina Najmi

Samina Najmi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up under a military dictatorship in Pakistan, the colonial legacy in South Asia, writing about migration, race, and gender, teachi...

14 Heinä 35min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
aamukahvilla
psykopodiaa-podcast
adhd-podi
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
rss-rahamania
rss-koira-haudattuna
rss-niinku-asia-on
rss-vapaudu-voimaasi
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
koulu-podcast-2
rss-arkea-ja-aurinkoa-podcast-espanjasta
rss-keskeneraiset-aidit
rss-8-oppituntia-rohkeudesta
jari-sarasvuo-podcast
kesken
puhutaan-koiraa
ihminen-tavattavissa-tommy-hellsten-instituutti
rss-luonnollinen-synnytys-podcast
aloita-meditaatio