185. Searching Hard for Self featuring Katy Grabel
Let’s Talk Memoir22 Heinä 2025

185. Searching Hard for Self featuring Katy Grabel

Katy Grabel joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about a childhood immersed in professional magic, when a parent’s dream because ours, wanting to be famous, searching hard for self, trying to understand the allure of our parents’ choices, using journals to familiarize ourselves with our emotional life from the past, what drives someone to want to be a magician, seeing the whole person when writing about loved ones and accepting their good and their bad, going deep, not including everything just because it’s a true story, waiting to publish a memoir until after loved ones are gone, drawing parents carefully and with love, and her new memoir The Magician's Daughter.

Also in this episode:

-being honest with ourselves

-accepting imperfections

-knowing what you want to say

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Riding the White Horse Home by Teresa Jordan

Katy Grabel lives in Taos, New Mexico, where she fits right in as the daughter of the Human Cannonball. A former newspaper reporter, her stories about professional magic have been published in ZYZYYVA and New Millennium Writings. She shares her time between an old rambling adobe house in Taos with her guitar, fancy dreams and penchant for dancing in her kitchen, and a lovely book-filled casita in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. She has always seen herself as a magician’s assistant, taking notes, and believes daughters of magicians—even more than sons—must make their own way:

Daughters must decide whether to be the willing assistant, command the spotlight, or turn away with a story untold. And all will be lost unless we recognize the resiliency and strength of our mothers as they lay down on the sawing table. Yet who can deny, late at night, when the dark is crowded by our failures, that every daughter of a magician must find her own magic.

Connect with Katy:

www.TheMagiciansDaughter.com

www.LeeGrabelMagic.com

Facebook.com/KatyGMagic

Instagram.com/KatyGMagic

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)

35. From Blog to Book featuring Stacey Freeman

35. From Blog to Book featuring Stacey Freeman

Stacey Freeman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how her husband’s infidelity became the impetus for her writing career, single parenthood and the shock of dating after divorce, getting...

23 Maalis 202340min

34. Excavating Cultural Identity in Memoir featuring Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson

34. Excavating Cultural Identity in Memoir featuring Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson

Jasmin Faulk-Dickerson joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up in Saudi Arabia under an oppressive regime, what being a woman of color does and doesn’t mean to her, invisible ident...

21 Maalis 202337min

33. Finding the Themes in Your Story featuring Debbie Weiss

33. Finding the Themes in Your Story featuring Debbie Weiss

Debbie Weiss joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about widowhood and capturing grief and loneliness in ways that keep readers invested, starting scenes in the middle, finding themes in your sto...

14 Maalis 202331min

32. The Intersection of Race, Privilege, and Addiction in Memoir featuring Laura Cathcart Robbins

32. The Intersection of Race, Privilege, and Addiction in Memoir featuring Laura Cathcart Robbins

Laura Cathcart Robbins joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about writing Stash, her new memoir that delves into addiction, privilege, and race, what self-care looked like for her while she tack...

7 Maalis 202339min

31. Language, Lyricism, and Sound featuring Suzanne Roberts

31. Language, Lyricism, and Sound featuring Suzanne Roberts

Suzanne Roberts joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the difficulty of being in a human body - especially a woman’s, the male gaze, deciding how to approach our work, writing about loss, g...

28 Helmi 202346min

30. The Magic of Dialogue featuring Felicia Thai Heath

30. The Magic of Dialogue featuring Felicia Thai Heath

Felicia Thai Heath joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about growing up on the run to help keep her father, a notorious Vietnamese kingpin, safe from capture, the power of dialogue to tell our ...

21 Helmi 202330min

29. Co-Authoring a Memoir featuring Vincent Paterson and Amy Tofte

29. Co-Authoring a Memoir featuring Vincent Paterson and Amy Tofte

Happy Valentine’s Day! In honor of artistic partnership, Vincent Paterson and Amy Tofte join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation on their experience collaborating on their new book Icons and Instinct...

14 Helmi 202349min

28. Resisting Self-Pity in Memoir featuring Maria Giura

28. Resisting Self-Pity in Memoir featuring Maria Giura

Maria Giura joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about which stories define us, avoiding the self-pity trap, the importance of allowing the reader to make decisions about the characters in our m...

7 Helmi 202339min

Suosittua kategoriassa Koulutus

rss-murhan-anatomia
voi-hyvin-meditaatiot-2
psykopodiaa-podcast
rss-narsisti
adhd-podi
rss-liian-kuuma-peruna
aamukahvilla
rss-rahamania
rss-eron-alkemiaa
kesken
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-koira-haudattuna
rahapuhetta
rss-tietoinen-yhteys-podcast-2
rss-niinku-asia-on
rss-uskonto-on-tylsaa
rss-onks-ok
rss-turun-yliopisto
rss-vapaudu-voimaasi
rss-finnish-daily-dialogues