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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Father's Day is coming and so it is fitting that my essay about my grandpa, titled The Tractor, should be published this month on Thread, a literary magazine. Writing about [...]
Have you ever been startled by a sound you had never heard before? Stopped in your tracks, wondering what the hell was going on? Felice Benuzzi's unique adventure memoir [...]
"Eventually, I hear footsteps crunching along the side of the house through the glazed snow and my mother's navy blue sigh through the frozen air." from The Language of [...]
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 [...]
Kelley reading at her book launch party at the Book Cellar in June September is Suicide Awareness Month, and on this occasion I want to present you with the beautiful [...]
Once in a while a book comes along that is like an old armchair. You simply don't want to get up. You could read on and on until your butt [...]
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 [...]
I'll be teaching a Mini Memoir Workshop at the Hemingway Birthplace Home as part of my gig as writer-in-residence. It will be a series of four evening classes in February [...]
Isn't this a great title? It's a great book, too; one of the most skillfully wrought I have read in a long time. Things I Don't Want to Know is [...]
Meeting other formidable writers is one of the great benefits of attending a writers residency. And so, last January, I had the great fortune of meeting Glen Finland during my [...]
I'm rerunning my six-word Dad memoir from three years ago, that sadly will always be true because, even 29 years after he died, the tears can still creep up [...]
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 [...]
I can't write about the book I recently finished and liked so much, Lynne Greenberg's The Body Broken, without going into my own experience of chronic pain, which is [...]
With the Winter Olympics currently happening in Sochi, Russia, it fits that my review of Maxim Shrayer's memoir Leaving Russia just appeared in the Jewish Book World. Thanks to this book, I feel [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Ellen Sheffield's Book Arts Studio at Kenyon College One of my housemates at the Kenyon Writer's Workshop was Mimi Chiang, and not only did we hit it off right away, [...]
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 [...]
Of all the books I read this year, the one I have thought most about, talked most about and continue to think about is Mara Moustafine's Secrets and Spies [...]
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 [...]
Edmund de Waals' memoir The Hare with Amber Eyes was my favorite memoir of 2011. I am still trying to figure out why because it defies so many of the [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]