Magical Memoir Moments
Taking a Turn Toward the Sixties, Mennonite Memoir Style
1966 That’s the year I heard the gravel crunch in the driveway of our Pennsylvania farm as my parents drove me and a few worldly possessions to Eastern Mennonite College. Today I’m suddenly curious about the world I lived in then and alert to the many other windows to the past currently online. Today I’ll…
Do You Remember December 1, 1969? Another Chance to Publish Your Story!
I’m beginning to think about my college years, 1966-1970, since that’s where my memoir Blush: A Mennonite Girl Meets a Glittering World ends and where a second volume could begin. So I was very interested in the new memoir just about Denis R. O’Neill’s senior year of college at Dartmouth: WHIPLASH: When the Vietnam War…
A Rabbi's Call for Sabbath: Come Out to the Water
I don’t fish. But I enjoyed this piece from the NPR program Only a Game on Saturday. I won’t be checking in to see what you have to say about it until Monday. My New Beginning is once again to enjoy the sabbath. Here are the words of Rabbi Eric Eisenkramer: I see a deep…
The Memoir Project: Marion Roach Smith's Video Book Marketing
One of my friends, Susan Neufeldt, whom I met at the Santa Barbara Writer’s Conference years ago and who is writing her own book about wisdom, sent me a link to the NPR program that featured Marion Roach Smith, an author and teacher in the memoir field I had not heard of a week ago….
Mary Karr's Secret–Humility and Confidence–Interview in the Paris Review
Mary Karr has done it again. Maybe I should say that Amanda Fortini has done it–meaning that the interview Fortini published in The Paris Review with Karr as a subject is wonderful. If you haven’t read any of Karr’s poetry or her three memoirs, you will want to do so after reading the interview. If…
A Perfect September Day
Corn fields ready for harvest along the Kal-Haven Trail What is more beautiful than a day in September? Today the answer was, “nothing!” I am looking out the window in my office right now as the sun is setting in the west, lighting up the weeping willow tree that has doubled in size since we…
Who's Being Bagged–Alexandra Penney or the Buyers of Her Memoir?
Remember when we looked at one of the casualties of the Bernie Madoff scandal–artist and blogger Alexandra Penney who got a book deal to tell her story? Here’s the blog post from February 12, 2009 catalogued under the catagory “memoir in the news.” Just one year later, the book is not only written but published,…
Listen to Six-Word Memoirs on NPR
Want to hear people from all over the country call in their life stories in six words? It’s a pretty good way to spend 17 minutes! Just click here.
Ben Yagoda on NPR: Great Overview of Memoir History
Two days ago I posted an NPR story summary with my own slant on it. It got picked up on www.expectingrain.com and reached hundreds of viewers, instantly becoming my most viewed post. That was exciting. Thanks, Expectingrain.com! Come to think of it, NPR stories on the arts almost always fascinate me, and I can tell…