For the sake of convenience, I usually tell people my parents were from Pittsburgh. But really, they were from a tiny hamlet called Denbo, about 40 miles south of Pittsburgh. To put a finer point on it, my mom grew up in a company town, and the patch of row houses took its name from […]

After Prince died, I asked the writers in my memoir classes to write a 500-word essay about a celebrity’s death that made them especially sad. We published writer Bob Eisenberg’s essay about Vidal Sassoon here, and it inspired my young friend Tara to publish an essay about Vidal Sassoon on her taraisarockstar blog as well. […]

I’m trying something new this summer, taking this weekly playwriting class at Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago. Over the course of 10 weekly 3-hour sessions that start on June 4, 2016, students will explore the process of creating a 2-minute play in the Too Much Light style, writing and crafting pieces based on true life […]

With all the passion and angst and fear and — in some quarters joy — attending the presidential election this year, it’s easy to forget Tip O’Neill’s favorite maxim: All politics is local. Of course presidential elections matter (see Supreme Court), but in my view, real change bubbles up, it doesn’t trickle down. Attention must […]

My assignment to write a 500-word essay about One Thing I Own that I Should Throw Away but Probably Never Will exposed a few of the writers in my memoir classes as…gasp….hoarders! Nancy Lerman, one of the youngest writers in my classes, is one of the packrats, and she managed to avoid writing about something […]