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In this honest conversation with Meredith Maran, prolific memoirist, book reviewer, novelist and editor of the newly released Why We Write About Ourselves, we dive into the risks of writing a memoir whose story you are still living. Meredith gives us her excellent test for “memoirability”–how to tell if your story should be a memoir. Having just interviewed 20 top memoirists publishing today and now under contract and deadline for her own next memoir, Meredith is uniquely poised to talk about the challenges, rewards and necessary tests and tips for the genre. She also tells us how she “cheated on her agent” to pitch the book to an editor while the agent was out of town, and the key information she learned about whether to make her memoir humorous with touches of poignancy or poignant with traces of humor. Find out how Facebook and iCal served her writing process. Get crucial insight into a book reviewer’s perspective on publicity, the publishing world, the fate of a book and the future of freelance.
Books and links discussed:
Meredith’s Review of recent podcast guest Paul Lisicky’s memoir, The Narrow Door
Novelist Susan Sherman (her writing partner)
Meredith Maran
Meredith Maran published her first poem in Highlights For Kids at age 6, her first national magazine article at age 15, and her first book at age 18. In the years that followed she built a house and raised goats outside Taos, installed brakes on the Ford assembly line in San Jose, and wrote an exposé of right-wing fundamentalism in Silicon Valley while working as a technical writer at National Semiconductor. After serving as Editor of the Banana Republic Catalogue (when Banana Republic was still cool), she created award-winning marketing campaigns for socially responsible businesses including Ben & Jerry’s, Working Assets, Stonyfield Farm, Smith & Hawken, and Odwalla.
Meredith has been a keynote speaker at venues including the SNAP Conference, the California Writer’s Club, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Charles Schwab Foundation, Stanford University, UC Berkeley, Educators for Social Responsibility, and the Education Writers of America. She’s been Writer in Residence at UCLA and at the Mabel Dodge Luhan House in Taos, and a fellow at MacDowell, Yaddo, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, Mesa Refuge, and Ragdale.
The author of a dozen nonfiction books and an acclaimed novel, Meredith is a member of the National Book Critics Circle and the MacDowell Fellows West. She writes features, essays, and book reviews for People, Salon, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Real Simple, Mother Jones, Good Housekeeping, and other publications.
She lives in Silver Lake, Los Angeles.
Story Makers is a podcast that features in-depth conversations with accomplished writers, filmmakers and industry experts about story craft, technique, habit and survival–everything you need to know to stay inspired, connect to your creativity, find others’ wonderful stories and your own success.
The hosts:
Elizabeth Stark is a published, agented novelist and distributed filmmaker who teaches and mentors writers at BookWritingWorld.com.
Angie Powers is a distributed filmmaker and published short story writer with an MFA in creative writing and a certificate in screenwriting from UCLA who teaches story structure at BookWritingWorld.com.
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