As Whitney guided me through the lobby to our memoir-writing class at the Chicago Cultural Center last Wednesday, I got wind of a special exhibit there about a Chicago neighborhood called Bronzeville. Wanda Bridgeforth, the 95-year-old matriarch of my classes? She grew up in Bronzeville. In her essays, she describes that segregated South Side neighborhood […]

I was treated to a whole bunch of this. Our trip to Mendocino, California, occupied us so fully and so well that I’m only just now writing this post today (Monday) on a 737 flying home. Only last Wednesday we were on a 737 to San Francisco. On our flight out, a young man with long blonde […]

Ah, the things I learn from the memoir-writers in my classes. Until civil rights advocate Regan Burke encouraged me to start up a class of my own here in Printer’s Row, I didn’t know a thing about “bibliotherapy,” the idea that writing memoir can help alleviate both emotional and physical pain. Regan’s guest post today […]

When I assigned “Traits I Share with my Mother” as a Mother’s Day writing prompt, Bill opted to write about his stepmother. His essay starts decades ago, when he first came up with the expression “Good Betty/Bad Betty” to describe her behavior. Betty is 102 years old now, and Bill says the moniker still fits. […]

A good friend of my sister Cheryl in Anacortes, Washington is in a book club, and on Monday afternoon I attended as a guest author. When one of the members said she loved how much Writing Out Loud taught her about Chicago, her fellow members swelled up in a chorus of uh-huhs and yeses. The reaction […]