Let’s Talk Memoir20 Nov 2025

212. Setting Your Writing Apart: A Conversation with Four Editors - Diane Gottlieb, Jennifer Fliss, Nina B. Lichtenstein, and Ronit Plank on Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage

Diane Gottlieb, Jennifer Fliss, and Nina B. Lichtenstein join Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about their work as editors and what they look for in submissions, setting your writing apart, knowing where to omit for maximum impact, the magic of prompts, working with supportive editors, how constraints give us freedom, ordering an essay collection, how stories sustain us, disentangling the artist from politics, allyship, the process of becoming ourselves, celebrating our heritage, the ecosystem of Jewish life, submission calls, and our new anthology Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture and Heritage.

Also in this episode:

-being seen

-writing into joy

-being a Jew by choice

Purchase Manna Songs here: https://elj-editions.com/mannasongs/ and wherever you get your books

www.Dianegottlieb.com

www.Jenniferflisscreative.com

https://www.ninalichtenstein.com/

Diane Gottlieb, MSW, MEd, MFA, is the editor of Manna Songs: Stories of Jewish Culture & Heritage, the award-winning anthology Awakenings: Stories of Body & Consciousness, and Grieving Hope. Her writing appears in Brevity, Witness, River Teeth, 2023 Best Microfiction, Smokelong Quarterly, Bellevue Review, Colorado Review, JUDITH, and Jewish Book Council among many other lovely places. She is the winner of Tiferet Journal’s 2021 Writing Contest in Nonfiction, and a finalist for Hole in the Head Review’s 2024 Charles Simic Poetry Prize and Florida Review’s 2023 Editor’s Choice Award in Nonfiction. Diane is the Prose/CNF Editor at Emerge Literary and the Special Projects Editor at ELJ Editions.

Connect with Diane:

https://elj-editions.com/mannasongs/

dianegottlieb.com

@dianegotauthor

Jennifer Fliss (she/her) is a Seattle-based author of the collections, As If She Had a Say and The Predatory Animal Ball. Over 200 of her stories and essays have appeared in F(r)iction, PANK, Hobart, The Rumpus, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. She was a Pen Parentis Fellow and recipient of a Grant for Artist Project award from Artist’s Trust.

www.jenniferflisscreative.com

https://nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810146259/as-if-she-had-a-say/

https://okaydonkeymag.bigcartel.com/product/the-predatory-animal-ball-by-jennifer-fliss

Nina B. Lichtenstein is a native of Oslo, Norway, and holds a PhD in French literature from UCONN and an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program. She is the founder and director of Maine Writers Studio, and the co-founder and co-editor of In a Flash Lit Mag. Her writing has appeared in various journals, magazines, and outlets, as well as in several anthologies. Her book, Sephardic Women's Voices: Out of North Africa, was published by Gaon Books in 2017, and her memoir, Body: My Life in Parts by Vine Leaves Press in May , 2025. She has three adult sons, and lives in Maine with her husband.

https://www.facebook.com/ninalich/

https://www.instagram.com/vikingjewess/

https://ninablichtenstein.substack.com/

https://www.ninalichtenstein.com/

https://www.mainewritersstudio.com/

https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/body-my-life-in-parts-by-nina-b-lichtenstein

–

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

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(253)

247. Turning Down the Volume on Critical Self-Talk featuring Carol Odell

Carol Odell joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about being methodically sexually groomed as a girl during her time working at a stable, sexual grooming as a slow desensitization process, inte...

23 Juni 31min

246. Investigating the Many Selves Within the Self featuring Cinelle Barnes

Cinelle Barnes joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about her brain aneurism rupture, writing a memoir two years after brain surgery, the healing modality that is writing personal narrative, mem...

16 Juni 47min

245. Avoiding the Need to Make Memoir Prescriptive featuring Amil Niazi

Amil Niazi joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the pressure on children of immigrants, outsiderness, striving to change our circumstances, what happens to women in the workplace after bec...

9 Juni 40min

244. The Project of Looking at Ourselves Honestly featuring Melissa Febos

Melisa Febos joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about romantic obsessions, celibacy as a portal to freedom, living her way into a corner and having to fight her way out, leading with scene and...

2 Juni 39min

243. Moving Toward a Deeper Empathy and Understanding: Jill Christman interviews Ronit Plank

In celebration of the launch of season 8, Jill Christman joins Let’s Talk Memoir to interview Ronit about growing up with no blueprint for making a relationship work, fending for ourselves in childhoo...

26 Maj 1h 6min

242. Writing Memoir as an Act of Resistance featuring Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez

Timothy Schraeder Rodriguez joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about going through almost a decade of conversion therapy, dismantling the dogma of pseudo science with its added layer of spiri...

19 Maj 41min

241. Waking Up to How Our History Has Controlled Us featuring Dr. Craig Yorke

Dr. Craig Yorke joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the toll of centuries of bigotry, being consumed by race, growing up with psychological financial desperation, living other people’s li...

14 Maj 34min

Season 8 Announcement

After four years of Let’s Talk Memoir, I wanted to take a moment to thank you for being here and share a few exciting updates about what’s ahead for the podcast. In this short episode, I talk about so...

14 Maj 3min