“Oh My God, I Said That?” Rachel Signer on Her Uninhibited Debut Memoir
In Conversation with Alex Higley and Lindsay Hunter on I'm a Writer But
Welcome to I’m a Writer But, where two writers-and talk to other writers-and about their work, their lives, their other work, the stuff that takes up any free time they have, all the stuff they’re not able to get to, and the ways in which any of us get anything done. Plus: book recommendations, bad jokes, okay jokes, despair, joy, and anything else we’ve got going on that week. Hosted by Lindsay Hunter and Alex Higley.
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In this episode, Alex and Lindsay talk with Rachel Signer (You Had Me at Pét-Nat) about writing so honestly about her personal life, plumbing her diaries for inspiration, deciding what kind of book she wanted to write, publishing her own magazine, her current inspirations, the drudgery of crafting with children, and more!
From the episode:
Rachel Signer: It was my first book, and I think I was living under this presumption that no one is going to read it, and it’s all an illusion, and that my publishing deal was a joke—and that maybe worked to my benefit in that I was less inhibited in some ways. There’s definitely things in the book that I read and I cringe. I’m like, oh my god, I said that? I wrote that about my husband? People must think x, y, and z! And I’m sure that they do; I was pretty uninhibited. And I think being postpartum, which is a very particular, difficult hormonal state, really helped me to be uninhibited.
When I say postpartum, people think postpartum depression. But even if you’re not experiencing postpartum depression, you’re just this whirling tornado of hormones out in the world with your baby surviving solely off of your body. So that’s where I was when I was writing about this. It was very proximate to that moment in a lot of ways.
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Rachel Signer is the founder and publisher of Pipette Magazine, an independent natural wine-focused print magazine, sold in over twenty countries via independent book and wine shops. Her writing about natural wine has appeared in numerous publications both online and in print. Originally from the U.S., Signer lives in South Australia with her husband and daughter, making natural wine under the labels Lucy M and Persephone.
