I’m pleased to have Regan Burke back with us as a guest blogger today. A civil rights activist, Regan is a regular at the memoir-writing class I lead here in Printer’s Row and has taken an interest in writing poetry now, too. Read on and you’ll find out why. by Regan Burke Late last month […]

I have the best job in Chicago. Four times a week an adorable dog leads me to a quiet room and falls asleep at my feet for an hour or so while I listen to older adults read the stories of their lives. Only bad part of the job? Sometimes aging gets the best of […]

Here’s one last essay I want to share from the “The Best thing I Ever Bought, Borrowed or Stole” assignment I gave to my memoir-writing classes. This one is written by Michael Graff, who grew up in a suburb of Chicago called Flossmoor. The “Pink House” he refers to in his story is their family’s […]

I love being a special guest at book clubs. Bookworms tend to be the polite type — no one criticizes an author who is sitting right there!Sipping on wine,munching snacks, talking about writing, what’s not to like? I had such a good time at a neighborhood book club that I asked Mel Theobald, one of […]

More than 300,000 people lined Pennsylvania Avenue on this day in 1963 to watch a horse-drawn caisson carry President Kennedy’s casket from the White House to the Capitol Rotunda. Giovanna Breu, a writer in one of my memoir classes, was there, but Not as an onlooker. She was covering JFK’s funeral and burial for Life […]