Magical Memoir Moments
Top Ten Fake Memoirs: What Can We Learn?
When I began this blog a little less than two years ago, I started a category called “memoir in the news” after several of the books on the “Top Ten Fake Memoirs List” located here made news for the wrong reasons. I invite you to read the descriptions of these ten books. What do they have…
Lee Snyder's Memoir: Spiritual Reflections with Oregon, and Peace, at Center
Do you remember the scene in the movie As Good as It Gets when Jack Nicholson tells Helen Hunt, “You make me want to be a better person?” This book made me feel like that. Lee Snyder, whose life of academic and church leadership, culminating in the presidency of Bluffton University, 1996-2006, far exceeded what she ever…
All in the Family: Memoir Q & A
As promised, here is an interview with today’s memoir expert, Linda Joy Myers. Dr. Myers was kind enough to answer six questions about specific cases concerning what, if anything, an author owes to family and friends in a memoir. This post is also Day Two of the giveaway. If you leave a comment below, you…
How To Write Your Memoir and Still Go Home for the Holidays: A Guest Blog
The day has come for both the guest blog by Linda Joy Myers and the first day of our giveaway contest. Below is the guest post that addresses the question of how to deal with our fears of offending family members from Dr. Myers, a therapist, writer, and teacher. I invite you to offer your…
Two Memoir Course Syllabi from Poet and Professor Jeff Gundy
Melanie Springer Mock contributed our first course syllabus, and now, I am happy to say, we have two more from Professor Jeff Gundy of Bluffton University. Jeff has published numerous books and poems. His latest collecton on Amazon is Spoken among the Trees, which you can check out by clicking on the book cover. Jeff’s…
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…
Laughing Out Loud: Mennonite in a Little Black Dress
If you too made the bedposts shake while you read Rhoda Janzen’s Mennonite in a Little Black Dress, you might enjoy this guest post over at womensmemoirs.com. The book uses seven classical elements of comedy to great effect. Thanks, Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett, for the invitation. While you are on their site, check out…
Uncle Joe from Brooklyn: A Mini-Memoir
Below find a delightful story with a great twist ending. Guest blogger Lanie Tankard, freelance writer and editor from Austin, TX, is back again! Lanie took a Writing with Heart class from Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett, who presented an excellent workshop in Austin, Texas, on February 5, 2010, preceding the Story Circle Network national lifewriting conference….
The Help: A Bestselling Novel with a Memoir Message
The Help spent 379 days in the Amazon Top 100 list. It has 1,751 reviews on Amazon.com and rates 4.5 stars. It is a novel, but, as Lanie Tankard argues, it deserves consideration from a memoir perspective. The Help by Kathryn Stockett New York: Amy Einhorn Books (Putnam), 2009. Available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, CD,…
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…