158. Writing About a Past Where You Weren’t Present featuring Karen Kirsten

Karen Kirsten joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the messy complexity of family, asking the right questions, writing about a time in history when you weren’t present in that history, utilizing and incorporating primary research, recorded interviews, archived documents, diaries, film, and photographs into memoir, writing fact-based vivid scenes, working with historians to accurately depict world-altering events, being honest with the reader and grappling with conflicting information on the page, changing the central question of your memoir, being a detective and being dogged, having a care plan and a nurturing creative community, writing about transgenerational trauma, inserting yourself into the narrative as a character, and her new memoir Irina’s Gift.

Also in this episode:

-structural changes late in the process

-delaying reveals to add suspense

-using image systems to address transgenerational trauma

Books mentioned in this episode:

The Fact of a Body by Alex Marzano-Lesnevich

The Most Dangerous Book by Kevin Birmingham

The Sinner and the Saint by Kevin Birmingham

Fairyland by Alysia Abbott

The Postcard by Anne Berest

The Situation and the Story by Vivian Gornick

Seabiscuit by Laura Hillenbrand

The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel WIlkers

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante

Leviathan by Paul Auster

Question 7 by Richard Flanagan

Swimming in Paris: A Life in Three Stories by Colombe Schneck

Who I Always Was by Theresa Okokon

Karen Kirsten is the author of Irena’s Gift, a National Jewish Book Award finalist for Autobiography & Memoir, winner of Zibby Awards for Best Family Drama & Best Story of Overcoming, and an Australian Jewish Book Award finalist. Irena’s Gift is also The Australian newspaper’s’notable book’, and described by Pulitzer prize winning author Geraldine Brooks as ”a disturbing investigation into the power of secrets to harm and to haunt.”

Karen is an Australian-American writer and Holocaust educator who speaks around the world on the topics of hate and reconciliation. Karen’s essay “Searching for the Nazi Who Saved My Mother’s Life” was selected by Narratively as one of their Best Ever stories and nominated for The Best American Essays. Karen’s writing has also appeared in Salon.com, The Week, The Jerusalem Post, Huffington Post*, Boston’s National Public Radio station, The Boston Herald, The Sydney Morning Herald, and more.

Connect with Karen:

Website: https://www.karenkirsten.com/

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/karen.kirsten

Book: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/747811/irenas-gift-by-karen-kirsten/

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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

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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