Some writers in the Memoir-writing classes I lead have had their memoirs published, but none has ever won an award (with a cash prize, no less!) for their writing…until now. A poem Andrea Kelton wrote has been awarded a cash prize for Second-Place in the Magnets and Ladders poetry contest! Andrea’s poem What a Feeling will […]

An eighty-year-old writer in the Thursday memoir-writing class I lead for Lincoln Park Village was so moved by the Mondays with Mike post here this past Monday that he wrote his own essay about author Wallace Stegner. Bruse Hunt read this essay in class yesterday and generously gave us permission to share it with all you […]

The snow this week has a lot of people asking me if my dog Whitney likes being out in winter weather. Truth is, she doesn’t have much choice. Poor guide dogs, they never get a day off work! The snow started falling in Chicago Sunday, and it was still coming down last night. Snowy weather […]

I met today’s guest blogger Jeff Flodin when he and his Seeing Eye dog joined our downtown memoir writing class for a few sessions in 2009. Writing has been Jeff’s primary vocation ever since: He is working on a short story collection about vision loss, and a version of this guest post originally appeared on […]

Some of you have heard my good news already, but worth repeating: Golden Alley Press, an independent publisher outside of Philadelphia, is publishing my new book! Writing Out Loud is due out next month, and I’ve been meeting with Nancy Sayre, my Golden Alley Press editor over the phone every week since we signed the contract last year. In […]