26. Memoir in Essays and Experimental Forms featuring Beth Kephart

Beth Kephart joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the crucial differences between a book of essays and a memoir in essays, choosing what to keep and what to cut, the gifts of nonlinear storytelling, the ethics of telling other people’s stories, allowing ourselves to find beauty in the seemingly ordinary, and her new craft book We Are the Words.

-Visit the Let's Talk Memoir Merch store: https://www.zazzle.com/store/letstalkmemoir

Also in this episode:

-Privacy in memoir

-Remaining open and vulnerable as writers

-Making meaning with experimental forms

Books mentioned in this episode:

Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje

Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas

The Circus Train by Judith Kitchen

An Earlier LIfe by Brenda Miller

Headcase: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms by Alexis Orgera

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher, co-founder of Juncture Workshops, and a book artist. Her new books are Wife|Daughter|Self: A Memoir in Essays, We are the Words: The Master Memoir Class, and A Room of Your Own: A Story Inspired by Virginia Woolf's Famous Essay (with Julia Breckenreid, illustrator). She can be reached through bethkephartbooks.com, junctureworkshops.com, and her Etsy book shop, https://www.etsy.com/shop/BINDbyBIND

Connect with Beth Kephart:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beth.kephart

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BethKephart

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

Website: bethkephartbooks.com

Juncture Workshops: junctureworkshops.com

Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BINDbyBIND

Beth Kephart’s next series of workshops can be found here: https://junctureworkshops.com/shop-4/#shop 

We Are the Words can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/WE-ARE-WORDS-master-memoir/dp/B098K2JSBN/

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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

More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK: https://ronitplank.com/when-she-comes-back/

More about HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE: 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