46. Still Life at Eighty featuring Abigail Thomas

Abigail Thomas joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the importance of curiosity, honesty, and vulnerability in our work, making our own rules on the page, her approach to writing and revision, the story she wasn’t sure how she’d tell, and her newest memoir Still Life at Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing.

Also in this episode:

-the magic of third person 

-writing to see what we mean

-how our work changes over time

Books mentioned in this episode:

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy

My Family and Other Animals by Gerald Durrell and other books in the trilogy

Abigail Thomas has 4 children, 12 grandchildren, 2 great grandchildren, 8 books, and a high school education. She has written three works of fiction, four memoirs, three children's books, a little book of poems, and a book about writing memoir. Her most recent book is the memoir Still Life At Eighty: The Next Interesting Thing. She lives in Woodstock with her two dogs.

Connect with Abigail Thomas:

Website: https://www.abigailthomas.net

Books: https://www.abigailthomas.net/books/

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Ronit’s writing has been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, 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 both the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards and 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 was named winner of  Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and Finalist in the 2023 Page Turner Awards. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she is at work on her next book.

More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers