You might remember my post about Laura Martinez, a blind woman who graduated from Le Cordon Bleu and worked at Charlie Trotter’s here in Chicago until the five-star restaurant closed in 2012. After two frustrating years trying to persuade another restaurant to hire her, Laura has opened La Diosa, her own restaurant at 2308 N. Clark in […]

Last week I asked my downtown Chicago group of memoir-writers to come up with 500-word essays titled What Makes Me Happy. “Don’t come back with lists, or with vague things like ‘family and friends’,” I said. I asked them to write about an event from the past couple weeks that left them feeling fresh, energized, […]

Every week is a history lesson: Two writers in my memoir classes marched in Selma, a writer in one class was at Woodstock, and this one was at the 1963 MLK march in DC.

Four different editors at University of Illinois Press went over the rough draft of my memoir before they published it. All of them suggested changes. One of the most common request? Stronger verbs. They also wanted descriptions that were more precise, more colorful, more heartfelt. Now, 12 years after my memoir, Long Time, No See […]

Beth announces a new memoir-writing course she’ll be leading in Printers Row in the South Loop of Chicago.