During Oscars week this year I asked the seniors in the memoir-writing classes I lead to choose a title of one of the films nominated for best picture and use it as the topic for their next essay. The Big Short: Know any short people with big personalities? Any stories about investments? Short circuits? Brooklyn: […]

Chicago Public Radio (WBEZ) is asking listeners and on-air guests to sum up their lives in three songs. This past week I asked writers in the four memoir classes I lead here in Chicago to take on this challenge as well. The WBEZ web site acknowledges that limiting your lifespan to three songs may not […]

If you’ve followed our blog for a while, you know who Wanda Bridgeforth is: She’s witty, she’s talented, she’s 93 years old and she’s been attending the memoir-writing class I lead in downtown Chicago for a decade now. When Wanda was growing up on the South Side of Chicago, her mother worked “in private family,” […]

Earlier this summer I spoke at a memorial service for a writer in one of the memoir writing classes I lead at Lincoln Park Village. This week a thank-you note arrived from her daughter, and along with the note she included a copy of an essay her mother had written when I assigned “I Have […]

The memoir-writing workshop I’ll be leading at the 2014 Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference.