28. Resisting Self-Pity in Memoir featuring Maria Giura

Maria Giura joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about which stories define us, avoiding the self-pity trap, the importance of allowing the reader to make decisions about the characters in our memoir for themselves, how we frame childhood and family dynamics, writing about the very early versions of ourselves after we’ve changed so much, and what challenges she faced writing Celibate in which she explores her relationship with the priest she fell in love with and how that experience helped her discover the life she wanted to live.

Also in this episode:

-shutting out the voices that tell you not to share your story

-gaining the perspective our narratives need

-how The Church and her faith guide her

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Boys of My Youth by Jo Ann Beard

Limbo by A. Manette Ansay

The Art of Slow Writing by Louise DeSalvo

Maria Giura is the author of Celibate: A Memoir, which won a First Place Independent Press Award, and What My Father Taught Me, which was a Paterson Poetry Book Prize finalist. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in several journals including New York Quarterly, Prime Number, Vita Poetica, Presence, Italian Americana, Lips, and Tiferet. An Academy of American Poets winner, Giura has taught writing at multiple universities including Binghamton University where she received her PhD in English. She currently teaches memoir workshops for Casa Belvedere Cultural Foundation. Follow her on Instagram @marigiurawrites, on Fb and at mariagiura.com

Connect with Maria:

Website: mariagiura.com

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

Facebook:: facebook.com/maria.giura.3975/

Courses:

casa-belvedere.org/product/virtual-writing-workshop-writing-your-memories-gifts-given-and-received/

Purchase Maria’s book, Celibate:

amazon.com/gp/product/1627202145?pf_rd_r=CQE6RA5DTDTWKAJ82YT9&pf_rd_p=edaba0ee-c2fe-4124-9f5d-b31d6b1bfbee

barnesandnoble.com/w/celibate-maria-giura/1131505200?ean=9781627202145

shop.aer.io/apprenticehouse/p/Celibate_A_Memoir/9781627202145-4208?collection=/0

bookshop.org/books/celibate-a-memoir/9781627202145

–

Ronit Plank is a writer, teacher, and editor whose work has been featured in The Atlantic, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Writer’s Digest, The Rumpus, American Literary Review, Hippocampus, The Iowa 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 a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot and was a Finalist in the National Indie Excellence Awards, the Housatonic Book Awards, and the Book of the Year Awards. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have been nominated for Pushcart Prizes, the Best of the Net, and the Best Microfiction Anthology, and her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ Eludia Award. She is creative nonfiction editor at The Citron Review and lives in Seattle with her family where she is working on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/

More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE: https://ronitplank.com/home-is-a-made-up-place/

Connect with Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo: Canva

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers