Hey! I’m doing another Writing Out Loud event in Chicago this Friday, and Audrey Mitchell (a writer from the “Me, Myself and I” class I lead at the Chicago Cultural Center) is going to be with me at this one, too: Friday, July 28, 2017 1:00pm – 3:00pm Ditka’s Restaurant, 100 E. Chestnut I’ll be […]

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 […]

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 […]

Last week’s writing prompt was “Happy Camper.”. After explaining that the phrase is American slang for a happy, contented person, I asked the writers in my memoir classes to think of a happy time in their lives. “Picture the setting, where you were, the sounds, what it smelled like, the feeling in the air,” I […]

The living room couch with an afghan nearby. Jamaica in the 1950s. Our backyard in the 1950s. A sandy cliff on Grenada. Petra. The woods near the family farm. The dining room table. A rocking chair. A Buddhist temple. A Wisconsin monastery. A Catholic church. Anywhere with trees. Grannie’s Jackson Heights apartment. Our garden. Eating […]