Magical Memoir Moments
Unfinished Business by Lee Kravitz: A Book Review
Like many of you, I am surrounded by books and paper everywhere I go. Here in the red chair, which serves as my favorite office, magazines spill over each other on the both sides of me. In front of me is the pile of paper I scooped off my work desk on the way out…
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…
Another Mennonite Memoir: The Steppes are the Colour of Sepia
My fellow memoir reader Clif let me know that the review I wrote of the following book has now been published in the Mennonite Quarterly Review.It has not been posted online yet, so here it is for those of you who are Canadian, Mennonite, or just interested in good family stories. The Steppes are the…
Memoir as History of Awe: Richard Kauffman on Theolog
Richard Kauffman is book editor for The Christian Century magazine and a personal friend. He created a blog post recently about memoir and has granted me permission to copy and past it here. If you like, you can also visit the site Theolog itself and check out the other blogging done there on subjects of…
Five Best Memoirs: A New List by Norris Church Mailer
Every so often I “Google” key words related to this blog–like “best memoirs,” ” memoir blogs,” and “top ten memoirs.” If you do the same–Google “best memoirs”–right now, you will come across this article in the Wall Street Journal by new memoirist Norris Church Mailer. I have not read her memoir about life with her husband…
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…
The Festival of Faith and Writing: A Feast of Flowers and Words
The Dutch know how to grow tulips–and writers! Every two years the good folks at Calvin College put on a Festival of Faith and Writing that attracts thousands of readers and hundreds of writers. And what a good time we have! This year’s headliners included Wally Lamb, Richard Rodriguez, Parker Palmer, Eugene Peterson, and Mary…
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…
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…