208. Leaning into and Trusting the Particularity of Our Story featuring Kelly Foster Lundquist

208. Leaning into and Trusting the Particularity of Our Story featuring Kelly Foster Lundquist

Kelly Foster Lundquist joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about falling in love with creative nonfiction, believing our story is worth sharing, contemplating how to tell it without hurting someone else, shifting from writing academically to personally, taking 20 years to complete a memoir, leaning into and trusting the particularity of our story, learning to stop explaining in our manuscripts, trying different structural approaches, the pattern hungry brain, incorporating culture, history, and research, when writing feels redemptive, liberating, and affirming, and her new memoir Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage.

Also in this episode:

-gratitude

-conversion therapy

-when a story feels too sacred

Books mentioned in this episode:

-The Argonauts by Maggie Nelston

-The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr

-Seven Drafts: Self-Edit Like a Pro from Blank Page to Books by Allison K. Williams

-Craft in the Real World: Rethinking Fiction Writing and Workshopping by Matthew Salessas

Kelly Foster Lundquist teaches writing at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park, MN. Originally from Mississippi, Lundquist has taught writing all over the United States (Boston, Chicago, Mississippi, Seattle, California, etc), as well as in Slovakia and Scotland. Her poetry and nonfiction can be seen in many places, including Villain Era Lit, Last Syllable Lit, Whale Road Review, and Image Journal. Her work has been nominated for a 2024 Best of the Net Award as well as a Pushcart Prize. She is the recipient of grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board as well as the Central Minnesota Arts Board. Her book Beard: A Memoir of a Marriage (Eerdmans) will debut in October 2025. She lives in a little red house in Minnesota with her spouse and daughter.

Connect with Kelly:

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

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1EgWxeL94v/?mibextid=wwXIfr

Website: https://www.kellyfosterlundquist.com/

Book: https://bookshop.org/p/books/beard-a-memoir-of-a-marriage-kelly-foster-lundquist/22424165?ean=9780802884732&next=t

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

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers

Avsnitt(242)

237. Creating Immediacy in Our Narratives Through Contained Timeframes and Present Tense featuring Mimi Nichter

237. Creating Immediacy in Our Narratives Through Contained Timeframes and Present Tense featuring Mimi Nichter

Mimi Nichter joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being hijacked on a plane when she was twenty years old in the first incident of international terrorism, how we can be socialized into si...

21 Apr 37min

236. Listening to Our Own Language and Going Where We Need to Go featuring Rachel Tzvia Back

236. Listening to Our Own Language and Going Where We Need to Go featuring Rachel Tzvia Back

Rachel Tzvia Back joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about living with depression, losing a sister, when a mother is emotionally and psychologically absent, how myths can be cloaks, listening ...

16 Apr 38min

235. Searching for a Universal Truth in Your Memoir featuring Julie Scolnik

235. Searching for a Universal Truth in Your Memoir featuring Julie Scolnik

Julie Scolnick joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about falling madly in love with a married Frenchman when she was 20 years old and living in Paris studying music, working our way back from a...

14 Apr 30min

234. Knowing When a Structure has Clicked in Place featuring Stephanie Weaver

234. Knowing When a Structure has Clicked in Place featuring Stephanie Weaver

Stephanie Weaver MPH joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about family estrangement, gaslighting, her recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, chronic illness, not wanting a book to be abou...

9 Apr 36min

233. Revealing the Divisions and Truths Within Us featuring Nikkya Hargrove

233. Revealing the Divisions and Truths Within Us featuring Nikkya Hargrove

Nikkya Hargrove joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the effects of incarceration on the family system, growing up lost and unsure who her family was, accepting the responsibility of becom...

7 Apr 31min

232. Self-Compassion and Recognizing the Illusion of Control featuring Amanda McCracken

232. Self-Compassion and Recognizing the Illusion of Control featuring Amanda McCracken

Amanda McCracken joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about what happens when you’re hopelessly, stubbornly in love with longing, fear of intimacy, the idea of falling in love vs. being in love,...

31 Mars 34min

231. Recovering and Reclaiming the Teenage Version of Ourselves in Memoir featuring Wendy C. Ortiz

231. Recovering and Reclaiming the Teenage Version of Ourselves in Memoir featuring Wendy C. Ortiz

Wendy C. Ortiz joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the English teacher who preyed on her when she was thirteen, writing about the person we are now when writing about our past, placing th...

24 Mars 35min

230. Leaning into the Most Authentic Version of Our Story featuring Mallary Tenore Tarpley

230. Leaning into the Most Authentic Version of Our Story featuring Mallary Tenore Tarpley

Mallary Tenore Tarpley joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the middle place between acute sickness and full recovery, living with the imprints of a disorder, resisting thinking in black a...

17 Mars 38min

Populärt inom Utbildning

rss-bara-en-till-om-missbruk-medberoende-2
historiepodden-se
det-skaver
nu-blir-det-historia
harrisons-dramatiska-historia
alska-oss
not-fanny-anymore
roda-vita-rosen
johannes-hansen-podcast
rss-foraldramotet-bring-lagercrantz
allt-du-velat-veta
sektledare
rss-viktmedicinpodden
sa-in-i-sjalen
rss-sjalsligt-avkladd
rss-om-vi-ska-vara-arliga
i-vantan-pa-katastrofen
rss-max-tant-med-max-villman
rss-basta-livet
rikatillsammans-om-privatekonomi-rikedom-i-livet