Let’s Talk Memoir20 Marras 2025

212. Setting Your Writing Apart: A Conversation with Four Editors - Diane Gottlieb, Jennifer Fliss, Nina B. Lichtenstein, and Ronit Plank on Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage

Diane Gottlieb, Jennifer Fliss, and Nina B. Lichtenstein join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about their work as editors and what they look for in submissions, setting your writing apart, knowing where to omit for maximum impact, the magic of prompts, working with supportive editors, how constraints give us freedom, ordering an essay collection, how stories sustain us, disentangling the artist from politics, allyship, the process of becoming ourselves, celebrating our heritage, the ecosystem of Jewish life, submission calls, and our new anthology Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage.

Also in this episode:

-being seen

-writing into joy

-being a Jew by choice

Purchase Manna Songs here: https://elj-editions.com/mannasongs/ and wherever you get your books

www.Dianegottlieb.com

www.Jenniferflisscreative.com

https://www.ninalichtenstein.com/

Diane Gottlieb, MSW, MEd, MFA, is the editor of Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture & Heritage, the award-winning anthology Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, and Grieving Hope. Her writing appears in Brevity, Witness, River Teeth, 2023 Best Microfiction, Smokelong Quarterly, Bellevue Review, Colorado Review, JUDITH, and Jewish Book Council among many other lovely places. She is the winner of Tiferet Journal’s 2021 Writing Contest in Nonfiction, and a finalist for Hole in the Head Review’s 2024 Charles Simic Poetry Prize and Florida Review’s 2023 Editor’s Choice Award in Nonfiction. Diane is the Prose/CNF Editor at Emerge Literary and the Special Projects Editor at ELJ Editions.

Connect with Diane:

https://elj-editions.com/mannasongs/

dianegottlieb.com

@dianegotauthor

Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is a Seattle-based author of the collections, As If She Had a Say and The Predatory Animal Ball. Over 200 of her stories and essays have appeared in F(r)iction, PANK, Hobart, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She was a Pen Parentis Fellow and recipient of a Grant for Artist Project award from Artist’s Trust.

www.jenniferflisscreative.com

https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810146259/as-if-she-had-a-say/

https://okaydonkeymag.bigcartel.com/product/the-predatory-animal-ball-by-jennifer-fliss

Nina B. Lichtenstein is a native of Oslo, Norway, and holds a PhD in French literature from UCONN and an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program. She is the founder and director of Maine Writers Studio, and the co-founder and co-editor of In a Flash Lit Mag. Her writing has appeared in various journals, magazines, and outlets, as well as in several anthologies. Her book, Sephardic Women's Voices: Out of North Africa, was published by Gaon Books in 2017, and her memoir, Body: My Life in Parts by Vine Leaves Press in May , 2025. She has three adult sons, and lives in Maine with her husband.

https://www.facebook.com/ninalich/

https://www.instagram.com/vikingjewess/

https://ninablichtenstein.substack.com/

https://www.ninalichtenstein.com/

https://www.mainewritersstudio.com/

https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/body-my-life-in-parts-by-nina-b-lichtenstein

–

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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