My dad's first outing in the pram, pushed by his Aunt Resi (a major character in Jumping Over Shadows). Walking along are the proud parents, i.e. my grandparents, Karl [...]
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 [...]
This week I was immensely shocked and saddened to learn that my mentor Michael Steinberg died. I found out via a Facebook post from a mutual acquaintance. I had just [...]
A new student asked me to explain the difference between creative nonfiction and memoir, and so I thought I'd clarify this here today. If one person asks, I figure, more [...]
This is not a drawing of the actual stone bridge mentioned in Traces, but it is pretty close to what I still see in my imagination. Here's one reason to [...]
In December I interviewed Sarah Wildman about her book Paper Love. This was a particular privilege because Paper Love is my kind of story: figuring out what happened in a [...]
Last week my essay "Is My Story Dramatic Enough?" was published in the Washington Independent Review of Books. Its foundation was laid one evening when one of my students stopped [...]
Writing about real people, especially family, is probably the number 1 issue writers of personal stories worry about. But it is not just an issue for nonfiction writers... In my [...]
This is my life at Kenyon College right now - sunlight filtering throug the trees along the Middle Path, where we writers tread to meet for our various workshops. I [...]
If memoir is the genre of truth, how could it possibly be acceptable to lie? Wasn’t James Frey fried because he lied? And yet, I venture to say that it [...]
Today I bring you what I think is a most inspiring post: My longtime student Diane Hurles has shared here before how she managed to find her voice as a memoir [...]
The often incorrect use of the term memoir is a pet peeve of mine; after all, it is my genre. It's what I write primarily, and what I teach. So [...]
My author Q&A with Leslie Maitland appeared in the Washington Independent Review of Books last week. Her memoir Crossing the Borders of Time, about finding her mother's first love whom she [...]
As announced last Monday, I am happy to welcome Shirley Hershey Showalter as a guest blogger today. We met in the online world last year; I was initially intrigued by [...]
I wonder what it means if I don't even notice anymore that my writing has gotten published? Have I reached a level of publication success where I can go, [...]
My great-grandfather's sewing machine, still in use on my dining room table When you write memoir, sooner or later you come upon the issue of, "Is this [...]
My Advanced Memoir Workshop was fortunate to host Wenguang Huang, author of The Little Red Guard, for an immensely informative Q&A session back in July. (Lucky for us, he lives [...]
I love it when students share their concerns with me and ask questions that I am sure many writers ask themselves. Today I am sharing one such question (with [...]
On the surface, Johanna Adorján’s An Exclusive Love is about her grandparents’ suicide. But it is really a love story, in more way than one, with all the requisite [...]
In honor of Father's Day, here are my six words on Dad: "Died too young. Found in pictures." Feel free to add yours!
If you're ever looking for a break from dark and heavy memoirs and want to read one that is light yet literary; or if you wouldn’t mind spending time [...]
In all my years of studying memoir, I have read many how-to-write-memoir books but I only go back to these three. I'm also not a big believer in books [...]
My Advanced Memoir Workshop students and I were fortunate enough to host Michael Steinberg, founding editor of the esteemed nonfiction journal Fourth Genre, and author, most recently, of Still [...]