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 […]

Have I told you that one of my sisters is enrolled in the memoir-writing class I lead in Printers Row? It’s true! Cheryl chose to write a “letter to dad” for this week’s assignment just like guest blogger Bruce Hunt did yesterday. I was so young when our dad died that I don’t remember him, […]

Here’s The opening paragraph from the essay Wanda Bridgeforth wrote when I assigned “I Walked Home” as a writing prompt this week. My father grew up in the South under a caste system that clung to the old thought of blue bloods. Looks and family were of great importance — even if your family was […]

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 […]

“Of Course it was Illegal” is one of the many, many writing prompts I’ve assigned over the years out of pure curiosity, and lucky you: generous writers in my memoir classes have given me permission to share some of their confessions here on the Safe & Sound blog. A number of writers came back with […]