Jeannine Ouellette joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the power of literary constraints, why the how can be just as important as the what, writing about childhood sexual abuse, believing in your project when publishing gatekeepers don’t seem to, and why sad stories can make us happy,
Also in this episode:
-poetic technique
-mother wounds
-finding your voice
Memoirs/Books mentioned in this episode:
We the Animals by Justin Torres
Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas...
Jeannine Ouellette joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about the power of literary constraints, why the how can be just as important as the what, writing about childhood sexual abuse, believing in your project when publishing gatekeepers don’t seem to, and why sad stories can make us happy,
Also in this episode:
-poetic technique
-mother wounds
-finding your voice
Memoirs/Books mentioned in this episode:
We the Animals by Justin Torres
Safekeeping by Abigail Thomas
Heavy by Kiese Laymon
Blow Your House Down by Gina Frangello
Bastard Out of Carolina by Dorothy Alison
Jeannine Ouellette’s memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best 100 Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award, with starred reviews from Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. Her work appears widely in literary journals and anthologies, including Ms. Aligned: Women Writing About Men; Women's Lives: Multicultural Perspectives; and Passed On: Daughters Write About Father Loss, Lack, and Legacy. She teaches through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, The University of Minnesota, and Elephant Rock, a writing program she founded in 2012. She is working on her first novel.
Connect with Jeannine:
https://www.jeannineouellette.com
https://www.instagram.com/msjeannineouellette/
Essay on craft by Jeannine Ouellette in Cleaver:
Ronit’s essays and fiction have been featured in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, 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 Best Book Awards and the 2021 Book of the Year Award and a 2021 Best True Crime Book by Book Riot. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and will be published in 2022. She is host and producer of the podcasts And Then Everything Changed and The Body Myth.
More about Ronit: https://ronitplank.com
More about WHEN SHE COMES BACK, a memoir: https://ronitplank.com/book/
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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
