Magical Memoir Moments
Another Top Memoir List! Dinty Moore Picks Top Six to Illustrate Variety
I love when friends send me memoir lists, because they are helping to build a community of readers and writers. This time, my friend Susan Blackwell Ramsey, award-winning poet and literary cheerleader, sent me the link. Others are welcome to do the same! Dinty Moore, the author of many nonfiction books, editor of Brevity, and…
A Free National Tele-Conversation on Place in Memoir–Sign Up!
Friends. Here’s a chance for us to hear each other’s voices, literally. I will be speaking on a roundtable along with the fabulous authors Tracy Seeley and Linda Joy Myers, whom you may have met in previous posts and comments on this blog. Linda Joy will interview Tracy and me on the tantalizing subject of…
Memoir Query Advice from Marla Miller: Subject Matter–Incest and Moms
A number of readers asked to see Marla Miller critique more query letters. So here she is again from her Youtube channel. You can also read her critique of another memoir at The Writer magazine online. If you have never browsed The Writer mag, you may want to do that also. It offers great advice…
Shirley's Top Ten Memoirs
“Which memoirs do you like best?” That’s the most frequently asked question when someone hears about this blog. Having now read at least 100 memoirs, I am ready to offer my own top ten list for your inspection. The ten books fall into three categories: Memoirs written before the current trend–books that first drew me…
A Million Little Pieces of Memoir Genre Trust
Like most of my readers, I am an admirer of Greg Mortenson and think what he has done in Afghanistan and Pakistan–building schools (helping girls, especially) and building relationships of trust–is the best way for Americans to interact with the people of Central Asia. A vast improvement over drone strikes and endless war! Yet the…
Audio Books v. Kindle v. Old Fashioned Book–Which is Better?
One of the best rewards of blogging is discovering a new or old friend in the comments section. Fun! Since I spent 28 years interacting with undergraduates at Goshen College, I love encountering them and hearing about their lives. Several of them commented on the review of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress I wrote back…
Doris Kearns Goodwin on Work, Love, Play, and a Bit of Memoir
Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin combines her knowledge of American presidents with Eric Erickson’s observation that we need to balance three needs–love, work, and play–in order to be fulfilled people. She describes Lincoln’s love of the theater and storytelling and contrasts his ability to play with Lyndon Johnson’s fixation on work. She herself has mastered the…
Say It Ain't So, Greg! Three Cups of Tea Comes Under Memoir Scrutiny
I loved the book Three Cups of Tea. You likely did also if you read it. This morning The New York Times carried an investigative story that questions the veracity of the central narrative about stumbling upon Korphe, a village in Afghanistan, after failing to reach the peak of the mountain K2. Here’s the story:…
The Remembering Self v. The Experiencing Self–A Crucial Distinction for the Memoir Writer?
The video below of a TED talk given by Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman is a must-watch for all memoir writers. In this talk Kahneman, psychologist and inventor of the field of behavioral economics, describes how hard it is to study happiness. A moment in time lasts about three seconds. The average person has over 600…