Magical Memoir Moments
Entering Lent and Leaving Social Media Behind: Welcoming a More Passive Life
What do you get when you cross Lent with Sabbath? I’m about to find out. The last four years of moving to Virginia, living in Brooklyn as a “granny nanny,” writing a book, and traveling, have been wonderful. You might call this period of time The Active Life. This style of living has been a…
Building "THIS": How an Online Course Has Inspired Me to Continue Blogging
A confession. After blogging for six years, I sometimes wonder if it is time to let go. Float away past the ether . . . Instead of blogging, I could take photography and painting classes that are part of the “road not taken” I want to travel. And speaking of travel, there’s that long bucket…
Yeats, Mennonites, and Memoir
At the Mennonite/s Writing VI conference March 30-April 1, 2012, the theme of “the self” recurred often. Poet and scholar Ann Hostetler drew attention to this theme in her talk: “The Self in Mennonite Garb, or, Where Does the Writing Come From?” Hostetler has been thinking about the lyric voice ever since she put together…
Literary Brooklyn: A Living Inspiration
While browsing in the Greenlight Bookstore on Fulton Street, I encountered this recent book about Brooklyn writers. The author, Evan Hughes, landed not one but two book reviews in The New York Times, one by Dwight Garner and another by Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts. Both are worth reading. And the book, if you live in Brooklyn or plan…
The Original American Memoirist? Walt Whitman!
What could be a better, and more honest, title for a memoir than Song of Myself? I had not thought of Whitman as the originator of American memoir (usually slave narratives and captivity narratives are given credit for this honor), but I think I could make a case for Leaves of Grass, and especially “Song…