How Not to Write Memoir: Splinters by Leslie Jamison

Episode 64: I use Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, one of the most highly-touted, critically-acclaimed, and effusively-praised books of 2024, to point out five no-nos of memoir writing.

Chapters:
0:00 Intro—The Publicity Machine
3:10 Splinters Summary and Jamison's Literary Rep
6:22 No-no 1—Don't Rush
9:20 No-no 2—Don’t Focus Only on Yourself
11:50 No-no 3—Don’t Overlook the In-between Moments
15:03 No-no 4—Don’t Rely on Your Writing Ability
17:37 No-no 5—Don’t Ever Be Dishonest
20:39 Conclusion—The Gatekeepers Should be Our Friends

Books mentioned, in order of appearance:
Splinters: Another Kind of Love Story, Leslie Jamison (Little, Brown and Company, 2024)
Be Brief and Tell Them Everything, by Brad Listi (IG Publishing, 2022)
The Liar’s Club, Mary Karr (Penguin, 1995)
The Empathy Exams, Leslie Jamison (Graywolf Press, 2014)
The Recovering: Intoxication and its Aftermath (Little Brown and Company, 2018)
Beautiful Children, Charles Bock (Random House, 2008)
Alice and Oliver, Charles Bock (Random House, 2016)

To hear an hour-long episode of the Books, Shows, Tunes and Mad Acts Podcast in which Jennifer Crittenden and I talk about Splinters:
Link to episode on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...
Link to episode on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/57aZ...

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