Looping back to the beginning is a good way to end. Since I began this series of blog posts on turning letters into stories with How to Transform a [...]
Civil War Letter (source: familytree.com) When researching family history, you might come across a letter that you find utterly fascinating. But you don't know much, if anything, [...]
A cache of family letters, or maybe even just one amazing letter written by an ancestor, is a great source for writing a story from family history. Martha McCallum's [...]
This is the carbon copy of my grandfather’s tightly typed letter, on which I based my story The Flying Dutchman, that also became a [...]
The pile of letters the father of my reader Donna sent to his sister in Chicago while he was stationed in India during WWII, including the silk [...]
I'm currently offering a free mini course on writing stories from family history. As I'm working on creating my own online course business, things are moving much faster than [...]
My grandmother left fourteen pages of these handwritten memoirs. For us grandkids they are a real treasure but thankfully we can all read German. Welcome to [...]
At my Great Aunt Resi's for New Year's Eve, early 1940s, Czechoslovakia (This picture is from my memoir Jumping Over Shadows.) When you write a story from family [...]
That's me in front of my grandparents' former house in Liberec, Czech Republic, August 2002 I'm happy to share that I'm featured on this week's edition of the Genealogy [...]
Welcome to another installment of my advice column where I answer readers’ questions about writing compelling stories from family history: Hope asks: I would like to write about a great-aunt [...]
War time diary of 12-year-old Sheila Cohen, living in London, 1940 (Jewish Museum, London - I took this photo in December 2018) Be sure to keep a diary [...]
My ever handsome friend Larry Palmer (on the left) with his niece and younger brother. I'm very proud that his excellent family memoir Scholarship Boy is coming out in [...]
If you want to write your family history and are floundering with where to start, look no further! Sign up here to receive my booklet 10 Unusual Prompts to Start [...]
Family stories aren't always happy go lucky.* Welcome to installment one of my new advice column where I answer any question readers ask about writing compelling stories from family history. [...]
I am happy to announce that the ebook as well as the paperback versions of How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History are published and LIVE (as they call [...]
Last week, after two months of much back and forth with my book production team at Inspire Books, I finally signed off on the cover of my forthcoming book How [...]
My last visit with my brother-in-law Louis this summer As a memoir writer and particularly as the author of a family memoir, I am often asked how my [...]
These past few days I have been able to do what I love best in my writing life: rummage around in family history. I've been rewriting an essay that O [...]
A drab and wet November morning--perfect for revising at the Royal Coffee House. Monday evening two weeks ago I wrote a story. I wrote it sitting in my car. I plugged [...]
Did you have any feeling of debt to anybody? Did you feel any constraints about what you couldWith her memoir The Tribal Knot - A Memoir of Family, Community [...]