My one minute of fame from that “Where are They Now?” video about me on the Oprah Winfrey Network last month brought up a lot of questions from friends who didn’t know me back when I modeled nude for art students. One Safe & Sound blog follower emailed me personally with a lot of questions, […]

Last month an email popped up in my in box from the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN) asking me if anything new has happened in my life since 2001, when I appeared on Oprah’s After the Show segment and spoke about my job modeling nude for art students. After dozens of email messages and some phone […]

Many of the fledgling memoirists who sign up for my 90-minute Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground workshop at Northwestern Summer Writers Institute on July 30 will be younger than the seniors in the memoir-writing classes I lead in Chicago. When I address groups like this, I can count on one of the writers asking […]

If you follow this blog, you already know guest blogger Sandra Murillo. Sandra lost her sight when she was three years old. She has always attended regular public schools, and has known she wanted to be a writer ever since her sophomore year at Thornwood High School in South Holland, Ill. Sandra’s first guest post […]

Some people escape to lake houses, some to cabins in the mountains, others to villas overseas. Me? When I want to get away by myself, I splurge on a fancy hotel. What luxury — a plush robe waiting for me, my bed gets made every morning, clean towels magically appear in the bathroom, and when […]