Podcast
Memoir Nation
Hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner · EN
Memoir Nation: Weekly Inspiration for Writers is an extension of the Memoir Nation community hosted by Brooke Warner and Grant Faulkner, two friends and colleagues who bring a community-minded sensibility to the writing journey. Originally launched as Write-minded in 2018, this is a weekly writing podcast that focuses on memoir and personal writing, as well as industry trends and tips and resources for writers and authors.
Memoir Nation features a segment called Book Alley at the end of each episode to talk about recent memoirs that authors have sent Brooke and Grant, or memoirs they've discovered that are thought provoking or have sparked inspiration. Brooke and Grant bring to this weekly podcast their deeply held belief that everyone is a writer, and everyone’s story matters. Discover more about Memoir Nation at memoirnation.com.
31episodes
Episodes
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Ruth Reichl on Writing You Can Taste (and it’s our 400th episode!)
4d ago00:47:59Tap to summarizeIt’s our 400th episode and we’re celebrating with celebrated food critic and author Ruth Reichl! Ruth wrote her first food memoir before food memoir was a thing, and she takes us back there to when bookstores didn’t know what to do with her work. Ruth is a pioneer of the food movement in America, and is known for her mission to demystify the world of fine cuisine. This is a generous interview, full of history and story—as well as some encouraging tips about the art of sensory writing. For Ruth, it’s all about creativity.Ruth Reichl wrote her first cookbook in 1972. She spent the seventies as restaurant critic for New West Magazine and the eighties as restaurant critic and food editor of the Los Angeles Times. From 1993 to 1999 she was the restaurant critic for The New York Times before moving to Gourmet Magazine as Editor in Chief. A defining voice in American food writing and journalism over the past several decades, she’s written five memoirs, two novels and two cookbooks, edited a dozen books and hosted two television series. Her movie Food and Country is available on streaming and she produces a weekly newsletter, La Briffe, on Substack. The recipient of 7 James Beard Awards, including Lifetime Achievement, she is currently working on a sequel to The Paris Novel.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Gail Butensky and Grant Faulkner on Telling Stories to Photos
2w ago00:42:29Tap to summarizeWe’re late to celebrate Grant’s new book, something out there in the distance, so we’re doing it this week, bringing on his co-collaborator on the project, Gail Butensky. Grant and Gail partnered up to create a beautiful and unusual project. This week’s show mixes things up a bit because Brooke interviews Grant, and Grant interviews Gail, and Grant shows up for his segments in all kinds of locations, including his mother’s apartment at her memory care facility. The show covers the power of intuition when it comes to both storytelling and photography, the risks indie presses can and do take, and why loving a good road-trip is a prerequisite to being Grant’s friend. And the trend this week, more state of mind than trend, is in celebration of indie books. Gail Butensky is a renowned photographer whose work has been featured on numerous record covers as well as in books and magazines. Her lens documented the punk and rock scenes of the '80s and '90s, with work appearing in The San Francisco Guardian, The Village Voice, and The Chicago Reader, and in publications including Our Band Could Be Your Life and CBGB & OMFUG: 30 Years. She is the author of the photography book, Every Bend. Grant Faulkner is the co-founder and co-host of Memoir Nation, co-founder of the online literary journal 100 Word Story, and the former executive director of National Novel Writing Month. He’s the author of The Art of Brevity: Crafting the Very Short Story, as well as fiction collections All the Comfort Sin Can Provide and Fissures. His stories have appeared in Tin House, The Gettysburg Review, and Norton anthologies. Together Grant and Gail collaborated on the new flash novel, something out there in the distance, out on the University of New Mexico Press.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Courtney Kocak on Writing Openly About Sex
3w ago00:55:13Tap to summarizeLots of writers want to write about sex and all the ways it shows up in their lives—and yet, it’s incredibly challenging to do. It’s exposing and uncomfortable. It means sharing the most intimate moments of our own lives, but also the lives of others. It can involve sharing mistakes, shame, and also some of the worst things that have ever happened to us when it comes to the negative side of the sexual spectrum: assault and abuse. That’s why this week’s show and conversation with Courtney Kocak is extra impactful. She talks about her own journey and evolution, and what she learned about herself and her own journey from writing her “accidental” feminist coming-of-age story, as she calls it. An encouraging message this week that you can do it, too. We’re all learning to live out loud a little better through our writing, one word at a time. Courtney Kocak is a writer, podcaster, and comedian based in Los Angeles. She originally hails from a rural farming community in Minnesota, home to more cows than people. As a writer, Kocak wrote for Amazon’s Emmy-winning animated series Danger & Eggs and Netflix’s Know It All. Her bylines include The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Cosmopolitan, Slate, HuffPost, The Sun, Catapult, BUST, Bustle, and others. She hosts three podcasts, The Bleeders, Private Parts Unknown, and Podcast Bestie, and her new memoir is Girl Gone Wild. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Caroline Paul on the Tension Between Obsession and Letting Go
4w ago00:42:19Tap to summarizeThis week is a treat because at the heart of many memoirs are stories of people throwing themselves into meaningful distractions in order to not have to face the challenges and unravellings so common to adult life. In her new book, Why Fly, Caroline Paul becomes obsessed with learning to fly a gyrocopter as her long-term marriage is dissolving. In the show we speak about risk, about love and loss, and about the things that keep us grounded—and not. It’s the stuff from which good story emerges, and this week’s book trend is not about AI. Just kidding, it actually is, and we’re sorry. Caroline Paul is a bestselling author, adventurous adventurer, and one of the first women to join the San Francisco Fire Department. She is known for non-fiction and memoirs highlighting risk-taking and outdoor adventure, such as Fighting Fire, The Gutsy Girl, Tough Broad, and most recently Why Fly. Paul has been a member of the Writers Grotto in San Francisco since 1999. Discover more about Caroline and her work at carolinepaul.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Danielle Bainbridge on Defying the Formula to Find Your Form
Apr 2000:48:07Tap to summarizeThis week we’re talking about form with yet another memoirist who defied conventions to create something unique and beautiful. Guest Danielle Bainbridge’s new book of personal essays, Dandelion, covers many topics—mental health, race, body, feminism, and so much more. Myriam Gurba calls her work “kaleidoscopic” and we ruminate on what that means in the context of form. This is a conversation on following the threads of your inspiration, writing the book you want to write, finding a publisher who gets it and allows you to do what you want to do. And in the trend, we talk about the death of the mass market paperback. Never a dull moment in book publishing! Danielle Bainbridge is Assistant Professor of Theatre, Black Studies, and Performance Studies at Northwestern University. Her first academic book, Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive, is forthcoming in 2025 from NYU Press. Danielle has received scholarships and residencies from Tin House, the Adirondack Center for Writing, and the Banff Centre in Canada. Her web series and media work have been nominated for three Daytime Emmy Awards and one NAACP Image Award. She lives and loves in Chicago with her partner and two naughty cats.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Rich Benjamin on Writing a Memoir Centering Events That Transpired Before You Were Born
Apr 1300:39:30Tap to summarizeHow do you get into a story that centers events you don’t remember because you weren’t alive to witness them? That’s what we’re covering today in an episode that reaches into considerations of intergenerational trauma, and how even what’s not said gets transmitted from one generation to the next. Author Rich Benjamin shares with us the story of his family’s tumultuous past in Haiti, and its impact on his grandfather, who never knew, and his mother, who chose silence over disclosure. Rich speaks about research, about how it can be easier to write “third-hand” about traumas you didn’t live through, and how doing the work to uncover stories like these can break the cycles of trauma. In this week’s book trend, we actually cover a positive AI trend—unheard of. Listen in for more. Rich Benjamin is an award-winning writer, cultural critic, and memoirist whose work investigates political, social, and economic power through deeply researched storytelling. Rich is the author of the memoir, Talk to Me: Lessons from a Family Forged by History, and Searching for Whitopia, a groundbreaking immersive study that presciently examined the rise of white anxiety and nationalism in the United States. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and other major publications, and he is a frequent commentator on NPR, MSNBC, and CNN. His memoir was just shortlisted for the 2026 J. Anthony Lukas Prize Project Awards. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Alicia Jo Rabins on the Spiritual Memoir
Apr 600:55:06Tap to summarizeFor many, spirituality is a private inner journey filled with nuance and informed by culture, family of origin, life experiences both positive and negative, and much more. Guest Alicia Jo Rabins shares her own journey at the heart of her new memoir, When We’re Born We Forget Everything—one that started with a fairly typical secular Jewish suburban upbringing and later twists and turns through the spiritual, the sacred, and the mystical. Her memoir is a beautiful mosaic that invites readers to consider and contemplate their own understanding of the Divine. This week, inspired by Alicia Jo, Brooke and Grant do just that, in addition to talking about publishing’s relationship to spiritual (and religious) works. Alicia Jo Rabins a writer, musician, performer, and feminist Torah teacher. Her spiritual memoir, out on Schocken Books, is When We’re Born We Forget Everything. She is the author of four additional books, including the poetry collections Divinity School and Fruit Geode. As a songwriter, violinist and composer, Rabins tours internationally with Girls in Trouble, her indie-folk song cycle about women in Torah. Visit her at www.aliciajo.com.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Memoir Showers and Celebrity Pet Memoirs (WTF?)
Mar 3000:23:37Tap to summarizeThis week’s Memoir Nation introduces a new memoir challenge and invitation to writers to come check out what we’re calling Memoir Showers at Memoir Nation. Join our community for a whole month of writing prompts, community support, and confetti—of course. And what’s up with this new slew of celebrity pet memoirs? Do you find this week’s book trend troubling or amusing? Tune in to see what you think!Cohosts Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner present today’s show. Together they’re the cofounders of Memoir Nation, just one of the many hats each of them wear. Both of them are memoir champions and have memoirs-in-progress. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Rachel Eliza Griffiths on Finding the Poetry in Grief
Mar 2300:49:51Tap to summarizeWe have a gorgeous interview this week on Memoir Nation with poet, novelist, and now memoirist Rachel Eliza Griffiths. Rachel’s new memoir, The Flower Bearers, is about two incidents that happened in short succession—the death of her best friend, poet Kamilah Aisha Moon, and the stabbing of her husband, author Salman Rushdie. Her book and this interview are an exploration of the layers of grief, how we show our layers of experience on the page, and so much more. This memoir is also our book club pick on Memoir Nation this month (happening March 27), so if you love the interview, check out Memoir Nation and join us for Book Club. Details at: https://memoir-nation.mn.coRachel Eliza Griffiths is many things: a poet, a visual artist, and a novelist—and now a memoirist. She is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize and was a finalist for a NAACP Image Award. Rachel is the author of several collections of poetry. Her third collection of poetry, Mule & Pear was selected for the 2012 Inaugural Poetry Award by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association. Her fourth collection of poetry, Lighting the Shadow was selected as a finalist for the 2015 Balcones Poetry Prize and the 2016 Phillis Wheatley Book Award in Poetry. Her debut novel, Promise, was a Kirkus Reviews and Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and she just published her memoir, The Flower Bearers, earlier this year.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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Janine Kovac on Getting Into Writing Residencies and Book Festivals
Mar 1600:40:47Tap to summarizeThis week Memoir Nation is tackling two areas of interest to most writers: writing residencies and book festivals. Guest Janine Kovac, in addition to being an author herself, adjudicates submissions for various residencies and is co-director of Litquake's Lit Crawl. As such, she reads hundreds of applications and submissions and has some pro tips on how authors should be thinking about their applications if they want to throw their hats in the ring. A great episode for anyone gunning for some private time away to write your work-in-progress or to be in the public eye to promote your latest book. Tune in or bookmark it for later!Janine Kovac is a former professional ballet dancer who writes about power dynamics and women's bodies. Her most recent book is the memoir, The Nutcracker Chronicles: A Fairytale Memoir. Janine is the co-director of Litquake's Lit Crawl and an alumna of several writing residencies including Hedgebrook, MacDowell, Mesa Refuge, WordSpace Studios, Vashon Artist Residency, In Cahoots, and the Mineral School. She adjudicates submissions for several writing organizations including Litquake and has served on the jury for U.C. Berkeley's Leadership Award.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
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