Magical Memoir Moments
Janet Oberholtzer: Because I Can
Janet Oberholtzer and I have a lot in common. We both grew up Mennonite in Pennsylvania. We are both living lives we never imagined as children. Janet’s story, as you can see from her memoir book jacket, describes her miraculous recovery from a terrible accident. I have been gently turning down offers to read and…
Beautiful Sentences: A Different Kind of American Idol Contest
About 200 people visit this website each week–not a great crowd, but one that is slowly growing. Each time I log in to the dashboard to begin writing another post, I get another set of statistics that informs me which post is most popular and what search terms people are using that brings my blog…
Contests, Gilchrist, and a Poem: Mini-Memoir
Without the Kalamazoo Gazette Literary Award Competition of 2007, I would not be writing this blog. Each year the announcement of the award kicks me into gear again, and I review what I have written that might fit. The writing itself happens throughout the year, often in 2-3 day retreats at Gilchrist, the Fetzer Institute…
Contests and Memoir
I have always enjoyed biography, autobiography, and the personal essay, but my study of memoir as a subject is only two years old. It started when I saw a 2007 literary contest announcement in the local newspaper, The Kalamazoo Gazette. The three categories were poetry, short story and memoir. That choice was easy, since my…