139. Stepping Outside the Box featuring Jennifer Lang

Jennifer Lang joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about asking the right questions, understanding what home means and where it is, being sure to put your story in the narrative you’re sharing, her sense of self on and off the yoga mat, answers to mid-life questions, learning to write flash prose, putting manuscripts away for a while, being a Jewish writer living in Israel, leaning into experimental and playful prose, coping with imminent empty nests, and her new book Landed: A Yogi’s Memoir in Pieces & Poses.

Also mentioned in this episode 

-self-doubt and self censoring

-reading our work aloud

-honing skills as an editor

Books mentioned in this episode:

-Several Short Sentences About Writing by Verlyn Klinkenborg

-Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by  Amy Krass Rosenthal 

Jennifer Lang is a San Francisco Bay Area transplant in Tel Aviv. Last September, she gave birth to her first book, Places We Left Behind: a memoir-in-miniature; in October2024, she welcomes Landed: A yogi’s memoir in pieces & poses into the world. A graduate of Vermont College of Fine Arts, Jennifer was an Assistant Editor at Brevity. Her prize-winning essays appear in Baltimore Review, Under the Sun, Midway Journal, and elsewhere. A longtime yoga instructor, she teaches YogaProse. Findable at www.israelwriterstudio.com 

Connect with Jennifer:

Website: https://israelwriterstudio.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jenlangwrites

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

Ger her book: https://vineleavespress.myshopify.com/products/landed-a-yogi-s-memoir-in-pieces-poses-by-jennifer-lang

BookShop: https://bookshop.org/p/books/landed-a-yogi-s-memoir-in-pieces-poses-jennifer-lang/21684650?ean=9783988320872

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Landed-yogis-memoir-pieces-poses/dp/3988320870/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bd8lRm7rAOuV3k1usbF7vA.M-X19uPxbllhxbajEHxpKmH_KgcTpjocnI07C8iCSdA&qid=1723456516&sr=1-1

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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

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