Yesterday Whitney and I enjoyed a magical morning in a classroom in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods of Chicago’s South Side: the Auburn-Gresham neighborhood. Fourth, fifth and sixth graders in a Montessori program at Oglesby Elementary are writing essays for a book they’ll publish in November, and their teacher asked me to come talk about memoir-writing. […]

Beth here. We got such a great response to that beautiful post Mike wrote last week about our visit with Gus that I asked him if he’d be willing to let me re-blog a book review he wrote here a few years ago. Here it is. A Father’s Journey to Understand His Extraordinary Son by […]

And now, an update on a few favorite female friends. Eliza Cooper ended up not racing in that Brooklyn Bridge Swim after the NYC Swims director decided that athletes with disabilities would have to pay an extra fee to participate. A few weeks later, Eliza and her volunteer guide from Achilles International swam 1.2 miles […]

A memoir-writer who grew up in Chicago’s Little Italy writes about his first job there.

When I assigned “The Best Job I Ever Had” as a topic for the writers in my memoir classes, Hugh went home and started making a list. “I wrote down every place I’d ever worked,” he said. “This one kept coming up on top.” His essay opens in the summer of 1943. Hugh was 11 […]