Two of the “What My Parents Believed” essays read out loud at our Printers Row memoir class last week seemed perfect for a Fourth of July post, and writers Robert and Maggy generously agreed to let me share excerpts from each of their essays here. Three cheers for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Robert’s […]

Two weeks from now I’ll be flying to New England to write in the surroundings of a national park in Maine. Or should I say, in Canada? I am one of a handful of writers accepted to Iota: The Conference of Short Prose at Roosevelt Campobello International Park this year. The schedule they sent with […]

One of the many many things I love about people of a certain age? They answer their phones when you call. After my new book Writing Out Loud came out last month, I dug up a computer file from a dozen years ago and started tracking down the seniors who’d been in the first memoir-writing […]

I assured the standing-room-only crowd at our Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground session at Printers Row Lit Fest Sunday morning that their wait for 95-year-old panelist Wanda Bridgeforth would be worth it. “Funny thing was, Wanda Jr. was waiting for me upstairs,” Wanda told me later. “And I was waiting for her downstairs!” My […]

Those of you who have read Writing Out Loud know that essays by the writers in the memoir classes I lead are sprinkled throughout the book. This week you have a couple of opportunities to meet some of those writers in person: Bruce and Anne Hunt (Writing Out Loud readers will know them from Ch. […]