When I assigned “My Favorite Year” as a prompt for the writers in the memoir class I lead in downtown Chicago, Anu knew immediately which year she’d be writing about: 1969. That’s when she immigrated to America. Her husband Pawan sat in with our class for a few sessions last year, and it was easy […]

I am pleased to introduce my friend Rachel Arfa as a guest blogger today. Rachel and I both advocate for cultural accessibility, and we met, guess where? In a theater lobby after enjoying a play. Rachel is profoundly deaf, communicates by talking and lipreading and uses bilateral cochlear implants to hear. A 2017 Fellow in the […]

Last week the prompt for my Wednesday memoir-writing class was, “How I Got through a Transition in Life that Wasn’t my Choice.” An overwhelming number of Chicagoans had voted against the new president, so I reasoned a lot of my writers might be concerned about Friday’s inauguration.  “For next week I want you to look […]

Recognizing that last year was not everyone’s favorite, the Chicago Tribune asked readers to submit stories for the paper to publish as a collection of short pieces defending poor 2016. Sharon Silverman submitted a shortened version of an essay she’d written for one of the memoir-writing classes I lead here in Chicago, and of course […]

Brigitte Erbe’s family was relocated from Germany to Tetschen, Czechoslovakia towards the beginning of World War II when her accountant father was assigned a job working for the German government. Brigitte was born in Tetschen and lived there until the day of her fourth birthday, December 5, 1944, the very day the invasion of Russian […]