54. The Truest Story You Can Tell featuring Jill Christman

Jill Christman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about how our deepest stories can save our lives, approaching trauma-writing as a process of discovery, practical tips for working on difficult material, allowing ourselves as much time as our essays need, finding the truest truth in our work, her role as senior editor at River Teeth, and her new memoir in essays If This Were Fiction.

-Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir

Also in this episode:

-how writing and publishing are not the same thing

-when authors flinch

-going really deep

Essay Daily article by Jill Christman http://www.essaydaily.org/2017/12/dec-22-jill-christman-on-essays-to-pry.html

Books mentioned in this episode:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes

Childhood by Natalie Sarraute

All Over But the Shouting by Rick Bragg

The Liar’s Club by Mary Karr

Cherry by Mary Karr

Somebody’s Daughter by Ashley C. Ford

A Fish Growing Lungs Alysia Sawchyn

Hell If We Don’t Change Our Ways by Brittany Means

In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado

Men We Reaped Jesmyn Ward

The Hero of This Book by Elizabeth McCracken

Owner of a Lonely Heart by Beth Nguyen

Stealing Buddha’s Dinner by Beth Nguyen

Jill Christman is the author of If This Were Fiction: A Love Story in Essays (University of Nebraska Press, 2022) and two memoirs, Darkroom: A Family Exposure (winner of AWP Prize for CNF) and Borrowed Babies: Apprenticing for Motherhood. A 2020 NEA Literature Fellow and winner of the AWP Creative Nonfiction Prize, she is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at Ball State University, senior editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative, and executive producer of the podcast Indelible: Campus Sexual Violence.

Connect with Jill:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/Jill_christman

Website: jillchristman.com

Writing sexual trauma: http://www.essaydaily.org/2018/12/dec-13-jill-christman-on-writing-sexual.html

Essays to pry open doors: http://www.essaydaily.org/2017/12/dec-22-jill-christman-on-essays-to-pry.html

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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

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More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/

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

Connect with Ronit:

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

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Background photo: Canva

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers