Debi Lewis joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation on best practices for writing about our children, navigating the medical memoir, positioning books to make them appealing to publishers, and how she broke into The New York Times and sold her book during a global pandemic.

Also in this episode:

-rewriting drafts from scratch

-using texts and messages as manuscript material

-discovering a memoir’s structuring principle

Memoirs mentioned in this episode:

Brain on Fire by Susannah Cahalan

Happiness: The Crooked Little Road to Semi-Ever After by Heather Harphan

BIO: Debi Lewis is the author of Kitchen Medicine: How I Fed My Daughter out of Failure to Thrive and has written for outlets including The New York Times, Bon Appetit, Huffington Post, Romper, Wired, and more. She lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband and two teenaged daughters. You can learn more about her at http://www.debilewis.com and follow her on Twitter and Instagram at @growthesunshine.

PURCHASE LINKS FOR KITCHEN MEDICINE:

BOOKSHOP.ORG: https://bookshop.org/books/kitchen-medicine-how-i-fed-my-daughter-out-of-failure-to-thrive/9781538156650

AMAZON.COM: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1538156652/ref=cm_sw_em_r_mt_dp_583S4P8V9N7BXANH6SGE

ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD:

https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538156667/Kitchen-Medicine-How-I-Fed-My-Daughter-out-of-Failure-to-Thrive

Instagram and Twitter @growthesunshine

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/

Sign up for monthly podcast and writing updates: https://bit.ly/33nyTKd

Follow Ronit:

https://www.instagram.com/ronitplank/

https://twitter.com/RonitPlank

https://www.facebook.com/RonitPlank

Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers