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This bonus episode features excerpts from five interviews from Season Four - those that we had with authors who write memoir. Over the summer, we will be revisiting conversations that cover the nuisances of genre, form, and style - offering mini masterclasses filled with advice and insight from some of our guests. This retrospective offers insight on source material, exploring the effects of traumatic experiences, self-reflecting on formative moments in life, and honoring the past. Memoir, which is considered creative nonfiction, offers writers a space to tackle difficult situations with grace and humility - also a chance to implore the mechanics of fiction to expand upon memory and circumstances.

Included on this bonus episode are:

Nada Samih-Rotondo (Writers Across the Margins, S4 E7) is a multi-genre Palestinian American writer, educator, and mother. Her writing has appeared in Masters Review, Gulf Stream Literary Magazine, and Squat Birth Journal. Our conversation featured her debut memoir, ALL WATER HAS PERFECT MEMORY, which blends folklore and history taking readers through the author's ancestral origins-and explores generations of silence and eventually, connection.

Minda Honey's (S4 E6) essays on politics and relationships have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Oxford American, Teen Vogue, and Longreads. Her debut memoir, THE HEARTBREAK YEARS (Little A, October 2023), is a hilarious and intimate portrait of a Black woman finding who she is and who she wants to be, one bad date at a time.

K E Garland (S4 E8) uses personal essays and memoir to de-marginalize women's experiences with an intent to highlight and humanize contemporary issues. She has published essays with Midnight & Indigo, Raising Mothers, and For Harriet. We chatted about her debut memoir, IN SEARCH OF A SALVE: MEMOIR OF A SEX ADDICT.

Wakisha "Kisha" Stewart 's (S4 E18) SONATA FOR A DAMAGED HEART recounts the complicated professional and emotional journey that Kisha takes from heart failure to being selected in 2022 by the American Heart Association as one of twelve spokeswomen advocating for women’s heart health in its national education campaign, Reclaim Your Rhythm.

Lisa Braxton (S4 E19) is the author of the award-winning DANCING BETWEEN THE RAINDROPS: A DAUGHTER'S REFLECTION ON LOVE AND LOSS. This memoir in essays is a powerful meditation on grief, a deeply personal mosaic of a daughter’s remembrances of beautiful, challenging and heartbreaking moments of life with her family. It speaks to anyone who has lost a loved one and is trying to navigate the world without them while coming to terms with complicated emotions.

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