Magical Memoir Moments

Carol Bodensteiner joins Mayor Pete and me at the base camp before the Nov. 1 rally and LJC Dinner.

I See Iowa Politics Up Close, and Carol Chooses Her Candidate!

By Shirley Showalter | November 4, 2019

Remember my friend, Carol, who lives in Iowa? I wrote about her in June. We met online as memoir writers, presented together at Prairie Lights bookstore, and have stayed in touch by phone for several years. In June, Carol was still trying to decide who she will caucus for in February. Well, there’s news to…

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Is Memoir Becoming Mandatory for Politics?

By Shirley Showalter | October 18, 2008

Candidates rise or fall depending upon how voters feel about the stories they tell and the stories others tell about them.  That’s why in recent years political conventions often feature films with the candidate as the hero, and hastily-written biographies usually crop up on Amazon and in the bookstores.  John Kerry was savaged by a…

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Barack Obama at Google

By Shirley Showalter | September 21, 2008
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Thank You, Mary Karr!

By Shirley Showalter | September 14, 2008

Yesterday’s New York Times carried an op-ed from Mary Karr about the way opponents of Barack Obama like to diminish him by calling him a memoirist, just as they make fun of his career as a community organizer. Karr, who has written several excellent memoirs herself, including and describes why memoir writing is a good…

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Book Club Night: 90 Minutes in Heaven

By Shirley Showalter | August 29, 2008

I live in a new neighborhood carved out of the Michigan woods. My husband and I fell in love with the winding road that led through pines into hardwoods, a road that now connects about twenty new houses to the highway. As the first residents of this new community, we had the opportunity to reach…

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Dreams from My Father

By Shirley Showalter | August 22, 2008

Today Barack Obama will announce his choice of a running mate for the race to the White House. I did not sign up for his text message. Instead, I am reading one of his memoirs, Dreams from My Father. I can already tell you that the book is beautifully structured and written. Unlike John McCain,…

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