180. Making Peace with a Past You Can’t Change featuring Niko Stratis

Niko Stratis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about entertaining the queerest part of her soul, working on a book almost by accident, building a manuscript backwards from a title, arriving at a structure early into the process, making peace with the past, being in a safe place to write, processing adolescence, the performance of masculinity, giving humanity to even the difficult people, making a writing habit to hit deadlines, working with a small academic press, her time as a music and culture columnist for Catapult, and her new memoir​​ The Dad Rock That Made Me a Woman.

Also in this episode:

-writing slowly

-talking to parents about our memoir

-working with a small academic press

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Night Moves by Jessica Hopper

-Tomboy Survival Guide by Ivan Coyote

-Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest by Hanif Abdurraqib

-Nevada by Imogen Binnie

-Tacky: Love Letters ot the Worst Culture We Have to Offer by Rax by King

Niko Stratis is an award-winning writer from Toronto by way of the Yukon, where she spent years working as a journeyman glazier before coming out as trans in her thirties and being forced to abandon her previous line of work. Her writing has appeared in publications like Catapult, Spin, Paste and more. She’s a Cancer, and a former smoker.

Connect with Niko:

Website: https://www.nikostratis.com/

Anxiety Shark Newsletter: https://www.anxietyshark.ca/

Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/nikostratis.com

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

Twitter/X: https://x.com/nikostratis

Link to book: https://utpress.utexas.edu/9781477331484/

–

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