Magical Memoir Moments

Here's a Quick Way to Discover Great Books: Six Lists That Get to the Heart of Memoir

I love lists. Don’t you? Lists save us time. They help us visualize our goals. They inspire us. They appeal to our sense of completion with a beginning, middle, and end. Book lists are the best of all. I first enjoyed lists I found on Amazon. Then Goodreads offered me the chance to see the…

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How to Write a Memoir

So you want to explore the fog of memory and write a memoir. Great! Like the IRS, I’m here to help. And so are many others. In fact, I am going to send you to them. Here is an eight-page booklet (.pdf) I wrote on the subject. What I say below will not duplicate the…

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Judith Barrington's Writing the Memoir: A Sophisticated Guide

Judith Barrington, memoirist and poet, has established a reputation as an excellent teacher and workshop leader. Her book Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art has become a well-known text in academic courses. When more than two professors recommended the book, I decided to buy it. I’m glad I did. Barrington selects some of the…

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Review of Ander Monson's Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir

  Lanie Tankard is back! This time she has read and reviewed a memoir that challenges the boundaries of the genre–and in the process tells a life story (indirectly). I think you will find her review fascinating.  I know she would love your comment, no matter what you think.  Anyone teaching the genre, and brave…

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Defining Memoir–With Tongue Firmly in Cheek

Thanks to Richard Gilbert, whose wonderful blog Narrative I highly recommend, I can include a link  guaranteed to induce a chuckle. One of the goals of this blog focuses on the quest to understand memoir as a genre. What differentiates it from other forms? Why is it both popular and maligned in the contemporary literary…

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The Power of Memoir Giveaway: Just Around the Corner

I am looking forward to a week of reading, writing, exercising, meditating, and blogging–another wonderful “staycation” like the one I described last summer. On Wednesday of this week, writer, teacher, and therapist, Linda Joy Myers will be doing a guest blog about the memoir writer’s relationship to family and friends–“How to Write Your Memoir and Still Go…

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Laughter and Family in Memoir Writing: Guest Blogs and an Upcoming Giveaway

 “What makes us laugh out loud?” is the question I am asking as I re-read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Next week I will try to answer that question for a guest post  I plan to send to Matilda Butler at the great website  Womensmemoirs.com. If you have not discovered this website, I recommend that you…

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Six-Word Memoir Contest

Have you tried to tell your life story in just six words?  Smith magazine discovered a gold mine with this concept a few years ago and now has published several popular books listing these short narratives. The whole concept derives from a single story. Supposedly Ernest Hemingway was challenged to tell a story in six words and…

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Ben Yagoda's Memoir: A History on the Kindle–A Double Review

Ben Yagoda’s history of the memoir genre should make any other survey redundant. He’s performed a great service, not only to readers and writers but also to the new field of nonfiction/memoir studies. As promised previously, I will describe not only what I learned from reading the book but also from reading it on the Kindle. First,…

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Why I am Loving My Kindle: And a Request for Readers to Report on Their Own E-book Experiences

A few weeks ago I posted a list of 18 books I had blogged about in the last six months. At the end of the list I included two books I have not yet read, pictured here. Today I got out my six-month-old Kindle and spent 20 seconds ordering the two books–Mary Karr’s Lit and Ben Yagoda’s Memoir:…

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