A Salute to Joyce Brothers
When I saw the news on my Chicago Tribune homepage last night that Joyce Brothers had died, my heart sank. I never met her, never had an exchange with her, and yet she helped me a great deal. She showed me the way, and she helped me sort out my head at a time when I was struggling. If I [...]
A Little Album of Love
with my parents at age one As part of my "Create" motto for this year, I've been reading Julia Cameron's Walking in this World: The Practical Art of Creatively. I have found her books on creativity most inspiring (more on that some other time). A passage I read this weekend inspired me to do a simple creative project that [...]
It’s OK to Lie in Memoir
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 is indeed OK to lie in memoir. My series on memoir in the Washington Independent Review of Books continues; click here to read the essay. And let me know your thoughts!
Touring the Frank Lloyd Wright Historic District of Oak Park
Urns in garden wall of Moore-Dugal Residence, built in 1895 by Frank Lloyd Wright Once in a while, it's fun to play tourist in your own town. While my kids are familiar with Frank Lloyd Wright's famous Robie House because it is right in our neighborhood, they had not been to the Chicago suburb of Oak Park where Frank Lloyd Wright [...]
Reading: Primo Levi’s Survival in Auschwitz
"It was my good fortune to be deported to Auschwitz only in 1944..." Thus begins Primo Levi's preface to his stunning but short memoir of his time as a prisoner in the infamous Nazi death camp. And already, from these first words, we know that we are in good hands. This is an account that has been masterfully rendered. Every [...]
The Many Lives of a Story
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 writer after having worked as a journalist all her life, and today she shares how she kept the ball rolling. One story, it turns out, can be many stories, and all [...]