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EP 464 - The Big Stories of a Memorable Memoir with Roz Morris

Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing

Release Date: 03/06/2026

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Mark interviews novelist, memoirist, and professional story whisperer Roz Morris about her writing life and her pivot into writing memoirs alongside her fiction.

Prior to the interview Mark shares a brief personal update a word from this episode's sponsor.

This episode is sponsored by an affiliate link to Manuscript Report. Use code MARK10 at checkout and save 10% off your own personalized report.

In the interview Mark and Roz talk about:

  • How Roz and Mark first met at the London Book Fair in 2012
  • What Roz writes and the types of stories that she loves and is fascinated with
  • Roz's journey which includes experience working in a publishing company and meeting and marrying another writer
  • The red leather-bound VISITORS book that Roz was given and she used for notes when she went on holiday, and how her husband convinced her to put those into a book
  • Roz's new book TURN RIGHT AT THE RAINBOW: A Diary of Househunting, Happenstance, Home
  • The concept of a house that holds within its structure and walls all the people and stories that took place within it and how that ties in to the story of Roz and her husband's search for a new home
  • How it's very hard to remember how you saw something for the first time
  • The way Roz decides what stories are going to make it into a particular memoir
  • How museums out of season can be great because of the passion that you can witness in the employees
  • The next memoir that Roz is currently "collecting" in the background
  • How in a novel Roz can inhabit a lot of people in different ways
  • Advice Roz would have moving from memoir to fiction and vice versa

After the interview Mark reflects on a few things Roz mentioned as well as something her advice reminded him of. He also rambles a bit longer than normal.

 

 

Links of Interest:

 

Roz Morris is a novelist, memoirist, and professional story whisperer. She’s the author of acclaimed literary novels with BIG emotional canvases, and memoirs that find meaning in unadventures. She's also a developmental editor and writing coach and has helped shape books that have sold more than four million copies—some of those from behind the scenes as a ghostwriter. She’s also the creator of the Nail Your Novel series for writers and the blog of the same name. She's judged literary prizes including the Amazon Kindle Storyteller Award and Vine Leaves Press New Voices competition, and has taught masterclasses for The Guardian in London and Jane Friedman’s online academy.

 

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0