Memoir Nation

This week’s episode is one that’s full of joy and inspiration and the payoffs of believing in yourself. Guest Kwame Alexander is one of the most upbeat, persistent, and tenacious people in book publishing, and we’re honored that he SAID YES to coming back to Memoir Nation seven years after his first appearance. This week’s show is about the power of yes and where yes can lead you—and we touch upon when and how to cultivate no, since sometimes you simply have to. Kwame shares stories from his past and how he became a 26-year overnight success story, and Grant and Brooke weigh in on how they balance (mostly) yes and (sometimes) no. Listen in! Also, for those interested in learning more about the Anthropic case that’s this week’s Book Trend, we encourage you to visit Brooke’s Substack, Writerly Things, for this week’s update. Kwame Alexander is an Emmy® Award-winning producer of The Crossover, his Newbery Medal-winning novel turned Disney+ TV series, the creator of the new animated PBS special Acoustic Rooster’s Barnyard Band, and the host of America’s Next Great Author, the first reality television show for writers which will premiere in 2026. He is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of 46 books, including his memoir, Why Fathers Cry at Night. A recipient of the 2025 NAACP Image Award, Kwame regularly shares his passion for literacy, books and the craft of writing around the world, including Ghana, West Africa, where he opened the Barbara E. Alexander Memorial Library and Health Clinic. His mission is to change the world—one word at a time. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we welcome Melissa Febos back to Memoir Nation to discuss her latest book, The Dry Season. Melissa is a fountain of inspiration and information and this episode covers topics as diverse as how to cultivate discernment in our reading to why memoir is the opposite of self-indulgent. We drill down into solitude as a creatively regenerative space, and get into some memoir craft, too. Hard to resist when we have a writing professor on the show. Melissa never disappoints, and this interview is one you’ll come back to when you need to fill your creative well. Melissa Febos is the author of five books, including the national bestselling essay collection, Girlhood; the craft book, Body Work (2022), which was also a national bestseller and an LA Times bestseller. Her new memoir, The Dry Season, was published in June 2025. She holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College and is the Roy J. Carver Professor at the University of Iowa, where she teaches in the Nonfiction Writing Program.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we have a fun episode that examines point of view in memoir. We’re talking about personal narrative that falls outside of first person, which means points of view that are second, third, and plural. We consider this style, which used to be far less common in memoir than it is now, with author Elizabeth Crane, whose memoir, This Story Will Change, implements all the points of view to great effect. We had fun with this one and we hope our writer-listeners will have fun experimenting with point of view, too. Don’t miss Brooke’s underrated Substack post on 5 Ways to Use “You” in Memoir. And especially don’t miss this incredible list of publishers that are accepting unsolicited manuscripts for memoir. Thank you, Becker! Elizabeth Crane is the author of four collections of short stories,  two novels, and one memoir. Her work has been translated into several languages and has been featured in numerous publications including Other Voices, Nerve, Ecotone, Swink, Guernica, and many other outlets. She’s a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, and her work has been adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater company, and has also been adapted for film. She teaches in the UCR-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What a treat to connect with Roxane Gay about memoir. We cover topics of oversharing and boundaries, as well as when memoir becomes manifesto. Today’s show covers vulnerability and writing about shame, and how Roxane’s success and visibility has impacted her writing. Plus, we get Roxane’s take on Elizabeth Gilbert’s new memoir, and why she thinks it’s “not good.” Much worth listening to this week, including Brooke’s celebration of having Roxane on the show in the first place after having been declined a couple times. A lesson for all that a no is not a forever no. Tune in! Roxane Gay’s writing appears in Best American Mystery Stories 2014, Best American Short Stories 2012, Best Sex Writing 2012, A Public Space, McSweeney’s, Tin House, Oxford American, and many others. She is a contributing opinion writer for The New York Times and the author of the books Ayiti, An Untamed State, The New York Times-bestselling Bad Feminist, the nationally bestselling Difficult Women, and The New York Times-bestselling Hunger. She is also the author of World of Wakanda for Marvel. And don’t miss out on her Substack newsletter, The Audacity.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we come back to a topic, the mother-daughter relationship, we’ve covered in various ways over the years. Author Jeannie Vanasco has a unique take, however, in that her mother lived with her while she was writing her new book, A Silent Treatment. She shares with us about writing from “within an experience” and why she wrote this book “for” her mother. There are endless nuances to explore when it comes to the mother-daughter relationship, and Grant and Brooke get into why this is a dynamic that memoirists will always be drawn to. Jeannie Vanasco is the author of the memoirs Things We Didn’t Talk About When I Was a Girl—which was named a ​New York Times Editors' Choice and a best book of 2019 by TIME, Esquire, Kirkus, among others—and The Glass Eye, which Poets & Writers called one of the five best literary nonfiction debuts of 2017. Her third book,  A Silent Treatment, is out this month on Tin House. Born and raised in Sandusky, Ohio, she lives in Baltimore and is an associate professor of English at Towson University. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week, Memoir Nation podcast turns 8! And we’re kicking off our new season with guest Myriam Gurba, the brilliant if sometimes controversial critic and cultural writer who’s the author of multiple books, including her memoir, Mean, and the forthcoming Poppy State. This week’s podcast is focused on language—word choice, puns, clever language, reading aloud, being in love with language, and so much more. Myriam is a master of language, and her books are a delight to read because of it. And we’re bringing back the book trend this season, kicking off with a conversation between Brooke and Grant about the trend of authors using AI to enhance their writing, specifically chosen to juxtapose the kind of language we read in Myriam’s work. If you’ve been thinking about how to write better, more creative, more unique prose, we’re circling that and more this week. And welcome to our new season! Myriam Gurba is the author of four books: Dahlia Season, Painting Their Portraits in Winter; Mean, and Creep. Myriam’s writing has been widely anthologized and has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Harper’s Bazaar, Believer, Paris Review, and elsewhere. She is a teacher, an editor, an anti-rape activist, a public speaker, a practitioner of plant-based magic, and a co-founder of Dignidad Literaria, a grassroots organization that combats white supremacy in the publishing industry.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week’s Memoir Nation is the last of our summer best-of round-up episodes. We chose to pair Victoria Chang and Carvell Wallace because these were two of our most heartfelt guests who delved deeply and honestly into some of memoir’s deepest emotions: shame; love; anger; happiness; and more. These interviews were a couple that most touched us for Chang and Wallace’s articulation of process, making connections, and staying with the emotions that move you. We hope you enjoy and Memoir Nation will be back next week with a new season and a new episode. We can’t wait! Carvell Wallace is a writer and podcaster who has contributed to The New Yorker, GQ, New York Times Magazine, Pitchfork, MTV News, and Al Jazeera. His debut memoir, Another Word For Love, explores his life, identity, and love through stories of family, friendship, and culture and was a 2024 Kirkus Finalist in Nonfiction.  Victoria Chang’s most recent book of poems is With My Back to the World, published in 2024. It received the Forward Prize in Poetry for Best Collection. Some of her other books include The Trees Witness Everything, OBIT, and Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. She has written several children’s books as well. She has received multiple fellowships and prizes and is the Bourne Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech and Director of Poetry@Tech. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this week’s summer celebration of the best of Write-minded and Memoir Nation, we’re partnering Amanda Knox and Lidia Yuknavitch, both of whom speak compellingly on what it means to reclaim your story. Whether you’ve been victimized in some way, as Knox was; or whether you’re ready to take back a particular story in your life, to cast yourself as the hero or heroine of your own narrative, as Yuknavitch has, these two guests will light the way. They show not just that reclaiming is a choice, but also how to do it in life and on the page. Such inspiring guests and role models for memoirists—and humans—everywhere. Amanda Knox is an author, journalist, and podcast host whose work explores criminal justice, media ethics, and the human experience. She is the author of two memoirs—Waiting to Be Heard and Free: My Search for Meaning—and co-hosts the podcast, Labyrinths. Lidia Yuknavitch is the National Bestselling author of two memoirs, The Chronology of Water and Reading the Waves; four novels: Thrust, The Book of Joan, Dora: A Headcase, and The Small Backs of Children, winner of the 2016 Oregon Book Awards Ken Kesey Award for Fiction; and the critically acclaimed collection of short fiction, Verge.The Misfit's Manifesto, based on her popular 2016 TED Talk, “The Beauty of Being a Misfit,” was published by TED Books. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we continue our August celebration of our favorite interviews and themes—and this week we’re going back to two authors who inspired us so much for their advocacy, their championing of non-mainstream characters, and their commitment to the hard work of speaking truth to power. Both of these heartfelt, brave authors had a lot to say about the kinds of characters they want to see in books, why representation matters, and how standing up for what they believe in isn’t so much a choice as a way of being in the world. Very inspiring to bring Maggie Tokuda-Hall and Lee Wind’s voices together in this week’s round-up. Maggie Tokuda-Hall is the author Also an Octopus, illustrated by Benji Davies, The Mermaid, The Witch and The Sea, Squad, illustrated by Lisa Sterle, and Love in the Library illustrated by Yas Imamura with more books forthcoming. She lives in Oakland, California with her husband, son, and their objectively perfect dog. Lee Wind is a storyteller out to engage, empower, and hold safe space for communities. He is the Chief Content Creator for the Independent Book Publishers Association and the author of multiple books, including the nonfiction titles No Way, They Were Gay? and The Gender Binary Is a Big Lie, the novels Queer as a Five-Dollar Bill and A Different Kind of Brave, and social justice and Queer-history themed picture books. Lee’s popular blog is I’m Here. I’m Queer. What the Hell Do I Read? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week marks the beginning of our August round-ups where we choose our favorite episodes from the prior year as we gear up for our new season. We’re revisiting two of our personal favorite authors and subjects: craft. Tune into Jane Alison and Jeannine Ouellette to glean insight and inspiration about your writing and the structures, forms, playfulness, and directions it can take when you’re attuned to all the possibilities and permutations. Don’t miss Janet Fitch’s August 19th class. Details are online here. Jane Alison is the author of four novels, as well as Change Me, translations of Ovid’s stories of sexual transformation, and Meander, Spiral, Explode, about the craft and theory of writing. Her newest novel is Villa E, about the collision of architects Eileen Gray and Le Corbusier. She is Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia. Jeannine Ouellette is the author of the bestselling Substack Writing in the Dark, a creative community of almost 18K people strong. Her lyric memoir, The Part That Burns, was a 2021 Kirkus Best Indie Book and a finalist for the Next Generation Indie Book Award in Women’s Literature, and her essays and short fiction have appeared widely in anthologies and journals, including Narrative, North American Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices