Margaret Juhae Lee joins Let’s Talk Memoir for a conversation about searching for her family’s lost history, growing up as a first generation Korean American living in Houston, archival work and interviewing relatives, capturing family voice, why we search to understand painful things, knowing ourselves as writers, finding structure later, the time to digest material, reading historical fiction with a critical eye, generative writing workshops, curbing self-editing tendencies, what home means, not giving up, and her memoir Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History.

Also in this episode:

-conveying immediacy through present tense

-investigative journalism

-writing in community

Books mentioned in this episode:

-The Situation and the Story by Vivan Gornick

-All other books by Vivian Gornick

Margaret Juhae Lee is the author of Starry Field: A Memoir of Lost History (Melville House). A former editor at The Nation magazine, she received a Bunting Fellowship from Harvard University and a Korean Studies Fellowship from the Korea Foundation. Her articles have been published in The Nation, Newsday, Elle, ARTnews, The Rumpus and Writer's Digest. She lives in Oakland with her family and Brownie, a rescue dog from Korea.

Connect with Margaret:

Website: www.margaretjuhaelee.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mjuhae

X: https://x.com/margaretjuhae

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/margaret.lee.790

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-juhae-lee-2b95905/

Starry Field: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/741044/starry-field-by-margaret-juhae-lee/

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Ronit’s writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The Rumpus, The New York Times, The Iowa Review, Hippocampus, The Washington Post, Writer’s Digest, American Literary Review, and elsewhere. Her memoir WHEN SHE COMES BACK about the loss of her mother to the guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh and their eventual reconciliation was named Finalist in the 2021 Housatonic Awards Awards, the 2021 Indie Excellence Awards, and was a 2021 Book Riot Best True Crime Book. Her short story collection HOME IS A MADE-UP PLACE won Hidden River Arts’ 2020 Eludia Award and the 2023 Page Turner Awards for Short Stories. She earned an MFA in Nonfiction Writing at Pacific University, is Creative Nonfiction Editor at The Citron Review, and lives in Seattle with her family where she teaches memoir workshops and is working on her next book.

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Background photo credit: Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

Headshot photo credit: Sarah Anne Photography

Theme music: Isaac Joel, Dead Moll’s Fingers