119. Leaning into Honesty, the Darkly Funny, and the Jewish featuring Gila Pfeffer

Gila Pfeffer joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about outsmarting genetic destinies and her preventative double mastectomy, remembering what’s at stake in our work, tempering the serious with a satirical lens, honing humor in our work, smart book titles and SEO, advocating for our book cover, considering both the art value and marketing value in our memoirs, fostering a humor-writing community, writing about being Jewish, depicting ourselves honestly, and her new memoir Nearly Departed: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences.

Also in this episode:

-choosing how much to explain

-conveying rituals

-writing classes

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Genius and Anxiety by Norman Lebrecht

-Inheritance by Dani Shapiro

-Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner

-Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris

-Nobody Will Tell You This But Me by Best Kalb

-My Mess is a Bit of a Life by Georgia Pritchett

Gila Pfeffer is a Jewish American humor writer and personal essayist whose debut memoir, NEARLY DEPARTED: Adventures in Loss, Cancer and Other Inconveniences, is out now. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Today.com, and elsewhere. Gila’s monthly “Feel It on the First” campaign reminds women to prioritize their breast health. A mother of four grown children, she splits her time between New York City and London.

Connect with Gila:

Website: gilapfeffer.com

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

Threads: https://www.threads.net/@gilapfeffer?xmt=AQGzcrgWO3KjUCrvxqH6-VUVEQcOffv4SUmjnKPrnIvRoeI

X: https://x.com/gilapfeffer

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@gilapfeffer

Publisher site: https://theexperimentpublishing.com/catalogs/summer-2024/nearly-departed/

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, 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 lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers