The schedule for Northwestern University’s Summer Writers Conference just came out, and guess what? I’m on it! Here’s the workshop I’ll be leading there on Saturday morning, August 11: Smelling is Believing: Writing Using Your Other Senses with Beth Finke Visual descriptions come easy to most writers, but when it comes to bringing readers into […]

The questions Robin Sitten and I got from our audience at the Perkins School for the Blind Thursday sure were thought-provoking. Here’s a sampling: Did you write your memoir Long Time, No See as therapy, or did you write it to share your journey with others? The people who sign up for your memoir classes, […]

Ten years ago my downtown Chicago memoir-writing class got so full that the Department on Aging started a lottery. A retired college professor named Myrna had been attending that class for years, and when her name wasn’t chosen in the lottery, she approached an organization in her own Chicago neighborhood to encourage them to sponsor […]

Mike, Whitney the Seeing Eye dog and I are heading to New England this week to meet the narrator who read the audible.com version of Writing Out Loud. Robin Sitten and I have corresponded via email, we follow each other on twitter, and of course I know her voice — I’ve listened to her sensational […]

In honor of Mother’s Day this year I asked the writers in my memoir class to tell us about the traits they share with their mothers. This one is written by Michael Graff. The “Nancy” in the essay is his wife, and the “Pink House” he refers to is their family’s vacation home near Lake […]