Memoir Nation

We 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.co
Rachel 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.
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This 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.
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Before memoir was the craze that it is today, there were writers who were defining the genre. Marya Hornbacher was one of them. Her two best-selling memoirs, Wasted and Madness, are two of the most influential memoirs of all time—giving rise to a whole slew of books not only on her topics of eating disorders and mental health, but about many challenging topics that later became collectively (and disparagingly) known as “misery memoirs.” Despite the judgments and the naysayers, these kinds of memoirs have outlasted the critiques—and prevailed. Marya Hornbacher was one of the trailblazers and she has some things to say about all of this and more. Marya will be teaching a class for Memoir Nation this June 11th called The "Give a Shit" Factor: Writing Memoirs That Matter, something she knows a thing or two about. Find the details at MemoirNation.com.
Marya Hornbacher is an award-winning journalist, New York Times bestselling author, and the recipient of a host of awards for her work, which include Wasted, Madness, Sane, and Waiting, and the novel: The Center of Winter. Shortlisted for the Pulitzer Prize, Marya has spent a prolific quarter century writing and teaching across genres. She has a popular Substack called Going Solo at the End of the World, and a new book coming out in 2027.
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This week, guest Mimi Nichter brings us a unique opportunity to talk about the courage—and many years—it sometimes takes to tell the story you must write. In Mimi’s case, it took 50 years. In 1970, Mimi was on Trans World Airlines Flight 741 when it got rerouted from Tel Aviv to to Jordan after it was hijacked by members of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Her memoir, Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience, is a recounting, a compassionate examination of the human lives at the center of this event, and a courageous act, given the political moment when so many are troubled by being forced to take sides in a political conflict where there is only loss and losers. This is an important story that took years to tell—and this week’s show grapples with how many stories like Mimi’s are out there, yet untold, and again marvels at the value of memoir as a vehicle of truth and witness.
Mimi Nichter is a cultural and medical anthropologist, public speaker, and a professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Arizona. She is the author or coauthor of four anthropology-related books and the recipient of the Margaret Mead Award and the George Foster Practicing Medical Anthropology Award. Her essays have appeared in HuffPost, Newsweek, and Brevity. Her brand-new memoir, Hostage: A Memoir of Terrorism, Trauma, and Resilience, was a finalistic for the the Tucson festival of books literary award for nonfiction.
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This week’s episode is a meditation on partnership and all the ways there are to both attend to your partner and to fail. In his new book Choreplay, author Jordan Carlos calls himself out for some of his shortcomings as a husband, but also explores ways he can and does show up for his wife. Grant and Brooke reveal their own thoughts about how they measure up as spouses, and also consider memoirs like these that are explorations of how we can do better—as humans, as partners, as parents, and in all the ways we show up in the world. Jordan Carlos is a comedian, thank God, because he’s able to take this seemingly fraught topic and make it funny and fun. Enjoy!
Jordan Carlos is a stand up comedian and actor based in New York. He recently wrote for and starred in the first season of Phoebe Robinson’s “Everything’s Trash”, and stars in the forthcoming animated series Motel Translyvania, coming to Netflix in Fall 2025. He is perhaps best known for his work as a writer and on-air contributor for The Nightly Show With Larry Wilmore, has written for Divorce and “The White House Correspondents’ Dinner” (in 2016) as well as “The Not The White House Correspondent’s Dinner” with Samantha Bee (in 2017). He has also appeared on Black Mirror, Nora From Queens, Party Down, Broad City, and The Colbert Report , among others. Jordan lives in Brooklyn with his wife and children, and Choreplay is his first book.
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