Let’s Talk Memoir30 Des 2025

219. Revealing More Than We Intended featuring Lora Arbrador

Lora Abrador joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation weaving together three themes in her memoir, writing about the ancient technique of egg tempura paint, incorporating 300 images in her book, gaining confidence as an artist, struggling to form a lasting romantic partnership, nature vs. nurture, our innate personalities, self-actualization, love addiction, feeling like a wounded bird, really connecting with an editor, publishing options, working with copyeditors, factchecking, recording an audio book, not intending to reveal ourselves but doing so anyway, and her new memoir Art & Love: My Life Illuminated in Egg Tempera.

Info/Registration for Ronit’s 10-Week Memoir Class Memoir Writing: Finding Your Story https://www.pce.uw.edu/courses/memoir-writing-finding-your-story

This episode is brought to you by Prose Playground. If you’ve been writing for years but haven’t published, have tons of ideas but can’t get them on the page, if you have a book coming out, or you’re simply curious about writing, join Prose Playground—an active, supportive writing community for writers at every level. Visit www.ProsePlayground.com to sign up free.

Also in this episode:

-trade reviews

-beta readers

-proof readers and proof listeners

Books mentioned in this episode:

Editing the RedPen Way: Ten Steps for Successful Self-Editing by Anne Rainbow

When She Comes Back: a memoir by Ronit Plank

Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage by Eleaonor Vincent

Old in Art School: A Memoir of Starting Over by Nell Painter

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren

Night Studio: A Memoir of Philip Guston by Musa Mayer

Hold Still by Sally Mann

My Name is Barbra by Barbra Streisand

At the age of 19, Lora Arbrador was given a recipe for making egg tempera, a homemade paint that combines colorful pigments with egg yolk. Like a musician with a strong affinity for a particular instrument, Ahrbrador found her creative home in egg tempera. To support her art practice, Arbrador became a registered nurse and the medical world has been the inspiration for many of her paintings, including the series, Ways of Dying: A Chronicle of the AIDS Epidemic. Her painting, Don’t Go My Friend: The Death of John Walsh, MD, won first place at the Art and Healing exhibit at Artwest Gallery.

In 1997, Arbrador co-founded the Society of Tempera Painters which was modeled after the 1901 Society of Painters in Tempera in England. Her first book, A History of Roman Calligraphy, is housed in the Marjorie G. and Carl W. Stern Book Arts & Special Collections Center of the San Francisco Public Library. Arbrador has exhibited in galleries and museums throughout the US, including South Bend Regional Museum of Art, Wenatchee Valley College Art Gallery and the Bade Museum of the Pacific School of Religion. Arbrador is the former Editorial Director of NurseWeek magazine Art & Love: My Life Illuminated in Egg Tempera.

Connect with Lora:

Website: www.artandlovebook.com

instagram: https://www.instagram.com/arbrador

facebook: https://www.facebook.com/arbrador

https://www.facebook.com/lora.arbrador/

substack: artblotterplus.substack.com

Purchase the book: www.artandlovebook.com/shop

–

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

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