184. Writing About Childhood Sexual Abuse without Reliving It featuring Dr. Stacey Hettes

Gayle Brandeis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about losing her mother to suicide and finding a way to write about it, her work across genres, leaning into what makes us unique on the page, trusting ourselves to discover what our work wants to become, why there is no better time to write than now, editing for connection with readers, the importance of play in our work, and her new collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss.   Also in this episode: -speculative nonfiction  -organizing principles in essays -choosing the right container for our work   Books mentioned in this episode: Craft in the Real World by Matthew Salesses A Constellation of Ghosts by Laraine Herring We Were Witches by Ariel Gore Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde The Suicide Index by Joan Wickersham   Gayle Brandeis is the author, most recently, of the essay collection Drawing Breath: Essays on Writing, the Body, and Loss (Overcup Press). Earlier books include the memoir The Art of Misdiagnosis (Beacon Press), the novel in poems, Many Restless Concerns (Black Lawrence Press), shortlisted for the Shirley Jackson Award, the poetry collection The Selfless Bliss of the Body (Finishing Line Press), the craft book Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women Who Write (HarperOne) and the novels The Book of Dead Birds (HarperCollins), which won the PEN/Bellwether Prize, Self Storage (Ballantine), Delta Girls (Ballantine), and My Life with the Lincolns (Henry Holt BYR), chosen as a state-wide read in Wisconsin. Gayle's essays, poetry, and short fiction have been published in places such as The Guardian, The New York Times, The Washington Post, O (The Oprah Magazine), The Rumpus, Salon, and more, and have received numerous honors, including the Columbia Journal Nonfiction Award, a Barbara Mandigo Kelly Peace Poetry Award, Notable Essays in Best American Essays 2016, 2019, and 2020, the QPB/Story Magazine Short Story Award and the 2018 Multi Genre Maverick Writer Award. She was named A Writer Who Makes a Difference by The Writer Magazine, and served as Inlandia Literary Laureate from 2012-2014, with a focus on bringing writing workshops to underserved communities. She teaches in the MFA programs at Antioch University and University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe.   Connect with Gayle: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gaylebrandeis Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gaylebrandeis/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/gayle.brandeis Website: www.gaylebrandeis.com -- 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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

16 Maj 202340min

Jennifer Lunden joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her experience with ME/CFS and her new braided memoir American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life, writing about trauma, the long-term effects of adverse childhood experiences on health, misogyny in medicine, using imagery to ground our readers, how she found the right publisher, and what it takes to be a working, published writer.   Also in this episode: -capitalism and grind culture -epigenetics -destigmatizing ME/CFS and other autoimmune diseases   Books mentioned in this episode: Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso The Ladies Handbook for Her Mysterious Illness by Sarah Ramsey Notes from No Man’s Land by Eula Biss A Good Country: My LIfe in Twelve Towns and the Devastating Battle for a White America by Sofia Ali-Khan Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich Hope in the Dark by  Rebecca Solnit Jennifer Lunden is the author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body's Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life. Her writing has been selected for a Pushcart Prize, listed as Notable in Best American Essays, and supported by grants from the Maine Arts Commission, the Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Canada Council for the Arts. Her essays have been published in Creative Nonfiction, Orion, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Longreads, and other journals. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Hewnoaks Artist Residency, Hedgebrook, Monson Arts, and the Dora Maar House in the South of France, and was the 2016 recipient of the Bread Loaf - Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Nonfiction.    A licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and former therapist, she provides individual and group supervision to other therapists and has also taught social work online for Simmons University and the University of New England. In 2012 she was named Maine’s Social Worker of the Year for her campaign to prevent cuts to Maine’s Medicaid program. She and her husband live in a little house in Portland, Maine, where they keep several backyard chickens, two cats, and some gloriously untamed gardens.    Connect with Jennifer: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jennifer.lunden Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jleelunden/ Website: https://jenniferlunden.com/ Links for book purchase are on this page: https://jenniferlunden.com/american-breakdown/   -- 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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

9 Maj 202359min

Camille T. Dungy joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about who speaks about the natural world and how, erasure in life and in art, the white gaze, reviewing the cannon of environmental literature with a critical eye, writing about motherhood, manuscript-cutting, leaning into humor and nuance in our work, and her new book Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden.    Also in this episode: -memoir that’s so braided it’s woven -creating work during a pandemic -interrogating ourselves   Books mentioned in this episode: Deep Creek by Pam Houston The Book of Delights by Ross Gay Motherhood So White by Nerfertiti Austin The Inland Island: A Year in Nature by Josephine Johnson   Camille T. Dungy is the author of the essay collection Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood, and History, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. She has edited three anthologies, including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Her honors include the 2021 Academy of American Poets Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an and an American Book Award. She is a University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University and the author of SOIL: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden. Connect with Camille: Website: https://camilledungy.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/camilledungy/ Get Camille’s Book: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Soil/Camille-T-Dungy/9781982195304    –  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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

2 Maj 202349min

Sarah Birnbach joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about grief and the wished-for mother, how Jewish prayer anchored her as she mourned the father she adored, birth order and responsibility, how spirituality has shaped her, deciding how much to share about her painful relationship with her mother, and publishing her memoir A Daughter’s Kaddish later in life.   Also in this episode: -not throwing those we have conflict with under the bus -feminism in Judaism -community as a balm for grief   Memoirs mentioned in this episode: The Florist's Daughter by Patricia Hampl The Tender Bar by J. R. Moehringer Inheritance by Dani Shapiro   Sarah Birnbach spent 35 years as a human resource management consultant helping organizations to achieve peak performance, and was a sought-after speaker at conferences across multiple industries. As a licensed clinical social worker, she worked as a family therapist in a juvenile and domestic relations court, and became a certified journal facilitator in 2010.   In her “encore career” as a writer and author, Sarah is a six-time award winner in the Soul-Making Keats Literary Competition, and her articles have appeared in numerous literary magazines and journals, as well as the Washington Jewish Week and the Jerusalem Post. Her memoir, A Daughter’s Kaddish, follows her journey through the year after her father’s death.   She lives outside Washington, D.C. with her husband and enjoys traveling and being Grandma to her seven grandchildren.     Connect with Sarah: Website: www.sarahbirnbach.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarah_birnbach Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SarahBirnbachWriterAuthor/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahsheilabirnbach/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sarah.birnbach/   –   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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

25 Apr 202339min

Candace Cahill joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about placing her newborn son for adoption and meeting him as an adult shortly before his death, writing for clarity, negotiating guilt, finding compassion for yourself, writing as a process for grieving, and her memoir Goodbye Again.   Also in this episode: -child relinquishment -extending grace to parents who fell short -the benefits of writing groups   Books mentioned in this episode: All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung When I Was Her Daughter by Leslie Ferguson Wild by Cheryl Strayed Educated by Tara Westover The Burning Light of Two Stars by Laura Davis   Candace Cahill is a multi-disciplinary artist from Denali, Alaska, and the author of Goodbye Again, a memoir about losing her son twice. A life-long learner, she utilizes traumatic experiences from her life to provide insights into self-compassion and healing. Known for her ability to engage diverse audiences, her stories are tragic yet uplifting. She delights and inspires audiences with her storytelling expertise through speaking engagements, written work, songwriting, and as a seasonal National Park Ranger. When Candace is not telling stories, you can find her walking in the woods, playing her guitar, and reading books.   Connect with Candace: Website: candacecahill.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/candace_cahill_ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/candace.cahill.16 –  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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

18 Apr 202331min

Maggie Smith joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about having and holding boundaries in our work and in our lives, trusting our instincts as writers, taking risks, telling the truth as we know it, allowing our material to dictate form, how our work changes over time, and her highly anticipated memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir Also in this episode: -protecting our children in our work -poetry’s possibilities -why we can only speak for ourselves   Books mentioned in this episode:  Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado The Two Kinds of Decay by Sarah Manguso The Chronology of Water by Kidia Yuknavitch Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas   Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and more.    Connect with Maggie: Website: https://maggiesmithpoet.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maggiesmithpoet/ Get You Can Make This Place Beautiful: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/You-Could-Make-This-Place-Beautiful/Maggie-Smith/9781982185855 -- 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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

11 Apr 202338min

Erika Bornman joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her experience escaping from KwaSizabantu and her participation in News24’s exposé alleging this strict Christian mission is a cult is a cult riddled with abuse, the compassion she found writing about loved ones with whom she has longstanding conflict, how she approached crafting emotionally difficult passages, the legal advice she got about including controversial material in her memoir Mission of Malice, and why our voice matters.   Also in this episode:  -the importance of therapy for memoirists -working with hard deadlines -building empathy through stories   Memoirs mentioned in this episode: Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt The Choice by Dr Edith Eger Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl The Witness Wore Red by Rebecca Musser Lost Boy by Brent Jeffs and Maia Szalavitz Wholly Unravelled by Keele Burgin Unfollow by Meghan Phelps-Roper I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou  Always Another Country by Sisonke Msimang Boy on the Run by Welcome Mandla Lishivha Killing Karoline by Sara-Jayne King Mad Bad Love by Sara-Jayne Makwala King   Erika Bornman has carved a career for herself in magazine publishing as a writer and editor, despite her lack of formal training. Her memoir is her first book and an important element in her quest to make the world a safer place for children. She lives in Cape Town, South Africa, with her two cats. About her memoir Mission of Malice: When Erika Bornman was nine years old, her family joined, and ultimately moved to, KwaSizabantu, a Christian mission in South Africa – a place touted as a nirvana, founded on egalitarian values. But something sinister lurks below the veneer of piousness here. Life at KwaSizabantu is hard. Christianity is used to justify harsh punishments and congregants are forced to repent for their sins. Threats of physical violence ensure adherence to stringent rules. Parents are pitted against children. Friendships are discouraged. Isolated and alone, Erika lives in constant fear of eternal damnation. At 17, her grooming at the hands of a senior mission counsellor begins. For the next five years, KwaSizabantu wages emotional, psychological and sexual warfare on her, until, finally, she manages to break free and walk away at the age of 21. Escaping a restrictive religious community is difficult, but rehabilitation into ‘normal’ life after a decade of ritual humiliation, brainwashing and abuse is much more painful, as Erika soon discovers. She cannot ignore her knowledge of the grievous human-rights abuses being committed at KwaSizabantu, and so she embarks on a quest to expose the atrocities. With her help, News24 launches a seven-month investigation, culminating in a podcast that will go on to win the internationally renowned One World Media Award for Radio and Podcast in 2021. In Mission of Malice: My Exodus from KwaSizabantu, Erika chronicles her journey from a fearful young girl to a fierce activist determined to do whatever it takes to save future generations and find personal redemption and self-acceptance.   Connect with Erika: Twitter: https://twitter.com/Ebee40 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/erikabornman/ Website: www.erikabornman.com Get Erika’s book: https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Malice-My-exodus-KwaSizabantu-ebook/dp/B09B45VMP6   -- 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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

4 Apr 202344min

Sandi Wisenberg joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about finding home, the structure our books need, her career as a journalist, negotiating a legacy of woman shame and Jewish shame, writing what you have to, and her new collection of memoiristic essays, The Wandering Womb. -Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir   Also in this episode: -looking for home -not wrapping our writing up too neatly -a closer look at “the wandering Jew” trope   Further reading about The Wandering Jew trope from rootsmetals.com: https://www.rootsmetals.com/blogs/news/the-wandering-jew-trope   Books mentioned in this episode: The Berlin Stories by Christopher Isherwood The Company She Keeps by Mary McCarthy A Chorus of Stones by Susan Griffin Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her by Susan Griffin Books by Phillip Lopate   S.L. Wisenberg is the author of the forthcoming book, The Wandering Womb: Essays in Search of Home, winner of the Juniper Prize in creative nonfiction. It will be published March 31, 2023, by the University of Massachusetts Press. She's also the author of a short-story collection, The Sweetheart Is In; an essay collection, Holocaust Girls: History, Memory, & Other Obsessions; and a nonfiction chronicle, The Adventures of Cancer Bitch. She is a fourth-generation native Texan who lives in Chicago and edits Another Chicago Magazine. She has an MFA in fiction from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and a BSJ from the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. She was a feature writer for the Miami Herald and has published prose and poetry in The New Yorker, Ploughshares, Narrative, Prairie Schooner, New England Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Colorado Review, and many other places. Her anthologized work is in Short Takes: Brief Encounters with Contemporary Nonfiction, Creating Nonfiction: A Guide and Anthology, Imaginative Writing: The Elements of Craft, Life is Short--Art is Shorter, and a number of other books. For ten years she was co-director of Northwestern's then-MA/MFA in Creative Writing program and was a graduate faculty recipient of a Distinguished Teacher Award. She has been the literary editor of TriQuarterly, the creative nonfiction editor of Another Chicago Magazine. and is now the editor of ACM. She's received a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Illinois Arts Council, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, National Endowment for the Humanities, and Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. She was the Coal Royalty Chair for a semester at the University of Alabama, teaching in the MFA program. Wisenberg has read her work and lectured at many universities and colleges, including Brown, Creighton, Minnesota State, Texas A&M, University of Tampa, Ripon, and Lafayette. Besides Northwestern, she has taught at DePaul, Roosevelt, Western Michigan, North Park University, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is working on a collection of short stories that are pre- and post-Holocaust and have a connection to old movies and Houston. One of these was runner-up in Narrative Magazine's Fall 2021 contest, and another won Narrative's Spring 22 contest.    Connect with Sandi: https://www.facebook.com/sandi.wisenberg Sandi Wisenberg @SLWisenberg slwisenberg.com Sandi’s first three books: https://bookshop.org/books?keywords=wisenberg Sandi’s forthcoming book:  https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781625347350 or Barnes and Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-wandering-womb-s-l-wisenberg/1142599024?ean=9781625347350 -- 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 Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/ 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/ 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

28 Mars 202356min