Why read Alice Munro?

In the weeks since Alice Munro’s death, I’ve been thinking about this paradox: While she won the Nobel Prize and the highest respect of reviewers, she never won the hearts of the mass market audience. Why? Hmmm . . . should we start by thinking about the … Read More

“Writing the memoir is in some ways like keeping one’s balance atop a narrow fence.”

A Review of “Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir” in 100 Words by Catherine Stover

Memoirists have to strike a difficult balance while attempting to meet two goals. Their first goal is to tell us about something that happened in their past by taking us back to … Read More

“Every story has a moral, Doherty used to say, but most have more than two.”

Here is what I love about the pieces in this book: they are designed to surprise the reader. The stories build to not just one revelation, but often several. And they are sneaky. The last sentence of the last story made me gasp out loud. Because it … Read More

“When I was 4 months pregnant and suffering from morning sickness, I was . . . thrown into a filthy, windowless, smelly horse stall.”

Satsuki Ina’s memoir includes excerpts from her parents’ letters from the years they were imprisoned during WW II in a so-called “relocation center” for American citizens who had Japanese ancestors. Her parents never talked about it. While Ina knew that she was born in a prison, she … Read More

“Think mystery, not mastery.”

Have you ever gotten stuck when working on a creative project? What do you do when your work grinds to a halt? Here’s an idea: spend 10 or 15 minutes every morning doing a type of meditation where you write down whatever is going through your mind. … Read More

“I’ve sometimes wondered whether novelists like to be remembered for what they’ve said or because they’ve said it in their own particular way – in their own distinctive voice.”

In 1978, the BBC invited Barbara Pym to be a guest on its program where well-known writers discussed their work. Her views on the “distinctive voice” of a writer was of particular interest: in the 1960s, her publisher declined her seventh novel because he said her style … Read More

“You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.”

After winning the UK’s most prestigious writing award, this Irish novelist was asked which books had influenced her most. She said she loved Writing Down the Bones because it told her to “just have a go and see what comes out.” This 30-year-old book still sells 30.000 Read More

“I don’t think you’re dying, ” I said. “I think you’ve just got a touch of cancer.”

What’s the hardest book to write successfully? For me, it would be a novel about teenagers who have cancer, fall in love, and then die. The challenges include: creating a page-turner (even though the readers know how it will end), having the characters be interesting but not … Read More

“Show me yourself.”

Anna Quindlen says that when Barry Jenkins was filming The Underground Railroad, he directed the actors to “Show me yourselves.” In other words, don’t act. Similarly, Quindlen recommends doing the kind of writing where you don’t posture for an audience. Just write the truth. Privately. For … Read More

“When people write reviews, they are really writing a kind of memoir – here’s what my experience was eating at this restaurant or getting my hair cut at this barbershop.”

Is this book a memoir? The title – The Anthropocene Reviewed and the subtitle Essays on a Human-Centered Planet — offer no clues. However, in the introduction, the author says that he wants to tell us stories about his life so that we can see how he … Read More

“In 1848 William and Ellen Craft, an enslaved couple in Georgia, embarked on a five-thousand-mile journey of mutual self-emancipation across the world.”

How does a writer create suspense when the outcome of the real-life story is already known? This book excels at keeping readers at the edge of their seats. How? Woo did a “staggering amount” of research to learn the sensory details of the way things felt, smelled, … Read More

“There are those who believe they know – and those who hope they may yet know.”

Seven pages into the preface of his huge collection of poems, Carl Sandburg  tells us that he will not pontificate on the art of poetry, which is what famous writers often do in that section. Instead, he says “A poet explains for us what for him is … Read More

“I learned that writing a memoir is like figure skating: it looks effortless and beautiful from the outside. . .”

“… while in reality, you stretch thy groin so much that you nearly split yourself in half for the whole world to see.” The author, JVN, whose trademarks are joy and kindness, shares what happened after the first memoir was published. Some readers expected JVN to be … Read More

“There is a difference between wallowing and bearing witness.”

Lakin continues, “Think of yourself in the role of storyteller . . . instead of as the victim who has been wronged and deserves retribution or pity . . .” For all the memoirists who are reluctant to write about difficult episodes because they don’t want to … Read More

“Part of these essays probably are rooted in genuine recollections, but how, in the circumstances, can we trust anything that he [John Forster] says in them?”

But how much can we trust the new conclusions drawn by this author, writing 150 years after Dickens died? That’s the question readers need to consider. Newly digitized information is now available, and the author has a Ph.D. in English literature from Oxford University. I enjoyed this … Read More