Category Archives: memoir
Noted: James Brown on memoir
James Brown, a creative writing teacher at Cal State-San Bernardino, is author of the celebrated 2003 memoir The Los Angeles Diaries, which was named a “Best Book of the Year” by Publishers Weekly. Brown’s new memoir, This River, is the … Continue reading
There’s something about memoir
. . . and what writers rarely admit about rejection & revision I have a lot of friends who are fiction writers, and they all told me that writing a memoir is different—and hard.—Darin Strauss, in The Washington Post Darin … Continue reading
Filed under evolutionary psychology, fiction, memoir, MFA, point of view, revision
Dubus & Russo wonder: Why Memoir?
Just two (famous) novelists enjoyin’ their coffee & nonfiction Andre Dubus III and Richard Russo discuss their memoirs at The Daily Beast: “How strange to write a memoir to find out what happens.”—Richard Russo, author of the forthcoming Elsewhere: A … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, fiction, memoir, NOTED
Review/Q&A: Lee Martin’s ‘Such a Life’
Stay in love with the journey.—Lee Martin Such a Life by Lee Martin. University of Nebraska Press, 214 pp. Lee Martin, an accomplished novelist, is also a master of life stories. His memoir From Our House focuses on his fraught … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, creative nonfiction, essay-narrative, memoir, MFA, REVIEW, teaching
Reading ‘Gatsby’ as memoir
The power of the reflective narrator in novels & memoirs The Great Gatsby is a touchstone book for me, as it is for many writers, so as I tried to rework my memoir’s prologue recently it was my instinct to … Continue reading
Filed under evolutionary psychology, film/photography, memoir, narrative, point of view, voice
Cheryl Strayed on honesty in memoir
I was an avid journaler all through my twenties and I wrote in my journal every day of my hike, sometimes twice a day. That journal was incredibly helpful to me as I wrote “Wild.” I recorded many details and … Continue reading
Filed under author interview, honesty, immersion, memoir
Memories of me & Harry Crews . . .
. . . but mostly of me, 1973–1977 for Tom I was a college freshman in 1973, and drove to school from our Florida beach town in a Triumph convertible with my eight-track blaring “Angie” by the Rolling Stones. I … Continue reading
Filed under essay-narrative, fiction, journalism, memoir, MY LIFE, poetry, teaching
Your brain on nonfiction vs. fiction
A guest post by Thomas Larson In a recent New York Times essay, “Your Brain on Fiction,” Annie Murphy Paul argues that “Fiction — with its redolent details, imaginative metaphors and attentive descriptions of people and their actions — offers an especially … Continue reading
Filed under essay-narrative, evolutionary psychology, fiction, memoir, narrative
Emerson meets ‘A Girl Named Zippy’
So is there no fact, no event, in our private history, which shall not, sooner or later, lose its adhesive, inert form, and astonish us by soaring from our body into the empyrean? Cradle and infancy, school and playground, the … Continue reading
The leverage of persona in memoir
Childhood tales by Jeannette Walls, Harry Crews & Annie Dillard Joining millions of others, I’ve now read Jeannette Walls’s memoir The Glass Castle. Walls wins the prize for modern memoir’s most dysfunctional family, edging out even Frank McCourt. Yet her … Continue reading
Filed under Dillard—Saint Annie, memoir, narrative, point of view, REVIEW, scene, teaching
