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 of dwelling in the kingdom of the sick, writing as a process of distillation, writing as refuge, raising tension without wearing the reader out, making narrative threads work together, the fluidity of memoir manuscripts, endings that resonate with beginnings, avoiding vindictiveness after the first draft, pulling readers inside our experience with specificity and particularity, and her new memoir Dizzy.

Also in this episode:

-narrative medicine

-the power dynamics of the medical system

-staying in our physical experience to write

Books mentioned in this episode:

-How to be Sick Toni Bernhard

Rachel Weaver’s novel Point of Direction was named a Top Ten Book To Pick Up Now by Oprah Magazine and won the Willa Cather Award for Fiction. Rachel’s newest book, Dizzy, an “arresting new memoir” according to Maureen Corrigan on NPR’s Fresh Air, published in February of 2026. Her second novel The Last Run, is forthcoming in June 2026 with Lake Union Publishing. Prior to earning her MFA in Writing and Poetics at Naropa University, Rachel worked for the Forest Service in Alaska studying bears, raptors and songbirds. She teaches at Wilkes University and Lighthouse Writers Workshop and holds a CPA in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University. For more information visit https://rachelweaver.net/

Connect with Rachel:

Website: https://rachelweaver.net/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61587520026172

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rachelweaver2222/?hl=en

Dizzy on NPR: https://www.npr.org/2026/02/09/nx-s1-5704301/dizzy-book-review-rachel-weaver

Course: Save Yourself Years of Drafting: https://www.rachelweaver.net/save-yourself-years-of-drafting-course

Book Purchase: https://www.amazon.com/Dizzy-Memoir-Connective-Rachel-Weaver/dp/1959000748

Book Purchase https://bookshop.org/p/books/dizzy-a-memoir-rachel-susan-weaver/dd0268049e6165a1

– 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