Caroline Paul on the Tension Between Obsession and Letting Go

This is a wonderful episode for listeners ready to dive into topics ranging from aboutness, how to think about what you’re writing, and why your memoir should not be about you. Guest Marion Roach Smith shares with listeners her algorithm for writing personal writing, which include five forms: blog posts, personal essay, opinion pieces, long-form essays, and books. This is one-part craft and one-part deep dive into the genre from a writer and teacher of the form who’s been doing this work since the 80s. Not to be missed. On Memoir Milestones, we’re celebrating Kira Higgs's Winnowing: A Memoir of Spiritual Longing in Secular Life. Marion Roach Smith is the author of four books, including The Memoir Project, A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life (Grand Central Publishing). A former staffer at The New York Times, she has been a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered and a talk show host on Sirius Satellite Radio. Marion has published in The New York Times Magazine, Vogue, Prevention, Good Housekeeping, The Los Angeles Times and more, and currently runs The Memoir Project, an online writing lab, at marionroach.com, where she teaches memoir worldwide. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s guest, David Lauterstein, joins us to talk about art and writing and purpose. Lauterstein’s book couldn’t NOT catch our eye. Sodomy Gods is a provocative title, and the point of giving his memoir this title was to make a point, to push readers to think about unequal treatment, and to stand proud. Lauterstein’s company, Nasty Pig, similarly pokes at assumptions, biases, and shame so often attached to queer sexuality. He and his partner, Frederick Kearney, launched the sex-positive brand in 1994, at the height of the AIDS crisis, when celebrating gay identity was itself an act of resistance. In this conversation, we talk about writing through grief and defiance, building something bold out of love and loss, and what it costs to tell the truth about who you are, and what doing so makes possible. David Lauterstein is the founder and CEO of the global queer brand Nasty Pig. He spent decades building a business and community before turning inward to write his memoir, Sodomy Gods, a deeply moving memoir about finding the courage to live authentically, the transformative power of chosen family, enduring love, and building a meaningful life on your own terms. Additionally, the book has been embraced as an important time capsule of being gay in the ’90s in New York amidst the AIDS crisis and is now housed in the Library of Congress, Harvard, Princeton, Columbia University, NYU, and other leading institutions. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Given our deep love of the show “Somebody, Somewhere,” Memoir Nation is thrilled to have Murray Hill as a guest on the show. We’re celebrating his new memoir, Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man, where he shares how reading the stories of people like Tina Turner and Viola Davis inspired him to tell his own. Murray talks about the value of chosen family, how he chose to write about abuse in his memoir, while also keeping the story upbeat and inspiring. He shares openly about the challenges of writing the book, which took him five years. This is a delightful and candid episode by someone who’s shown how purpose can be a lifeline. Murray Hill, the self-proclaimed hardest-working middle-aged man in show business, is a one-man entertainment machine: comedian, host, actor, writer, producer, and walking time capsule of classic showbiz charm. Murray has spent decades turning every stage he steps on into his own personal variety show—and we expect the same today. Television audiences know him as the lovable Fred Rococo on HBO’s Somebody Somewhere, which won a bunch of awards, but the main one is that it’s one of my favorite shows all-time. Murray’s talents extend beyond performance. He’s served as a guest correspondent for ABC News and Hulu’s Pride Across America, reporting live from the nation’s biggest Pride celebrations. NBC News named him one of the “30 Most Iconic and Influential Drag Performers in Modern History.” And his memoir, Showbiz! My Life as a Middle-Aged Man just came out.

This week we’re honoring the power of the travel memoir, which is a popular subgenre of memoir—and a place where exploration meets self-discovery. The act of travel in fact has much in common with writing memoir, as both pursuits push you outside your comfort zone, and both invite self-interrogation. Not to mention, memoir-writing itself is a form of travel—to your past, into the recesses of personal experience, and into memory. So even if you’re not a travel writer, there’s much to be learned from an episode about the travel memoir. For Memoir Milestones this week, we’re celebrating Lisa Cheek, who has a brand new “mostly true” memoir out called THE BIG DAY: Saying "I Do" Only to Discover I Didn't. Listen in to find out why you should buy this book! Ebony Walden is an author, filmmaker, and speaker who has traveled to nearly fifty countries and all fifty US states. She is the founder of Ebony Walden Consulting, a racial equity–focused consulting firm, and the creator of Black Beyond Borders, a documentary series and podcast exploring culture, creativity, connection, and cuisine across the African diaspora. In 2025, she won the LA Independent Women Film Award for Best Web Series-Pilot. The series is also an official selection of the Virginia Black Film Festival and has several planned festival screenings in 2026. Ebony also writes Beyond Borders, a weekly Substack newsletter on travel and transformation. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week’s show explores writing the hard thing—and how releasing the hard thing into the world frees us from the burden of carrying secrets and being anything less than our whole selves in the world. Guest Jessy Easton is a beautiful writer with a strong Substack following for her work in somatic writing and her serialization of her memoir, The One Who Leaves. We’re excited to share with listeners Jessy’s beautiful insights about how her writing saved her, and some of what she’s learned—and what she teaches—through writing the hard thing. We also invite you to check out Grant’s guest post, “A Killing of Oneself. A Tendency.” on Jessy’s Substack, and to celebrate this week’s Memoir Milestone, Living with Strangers, by Robin Rosenbluth. Jessy Easton is a writer, memoirist, and somatic writing facilitator. She is the author of the serialized memoir The One Who Leaves, a Substack bestseller. Her Substack, AFTER/WORDS, is a space where readers engage with difficult stories through essays, live sessions, and somatic writing prompts focused on memory, lived experience, and the body. Her work has been published in The Rumpus, Good River Review, Beacon Quarterly, Rappahannock Review, and elsewhere, and her essay “The Things We Leave Out” was nominated for the Pushcart Prize Born in the Mojave Desert of California, Jessy now lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains with her partner, their son, and their two black dogs. She is currently working on her next book. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.