February is Love Your Library month, and I’m celebrating in style: The Library of Congress Talking Book Service just released an audio version of my new book Writing Out Loud free of charge to Americans who are blind or visually impaired. The Library of Congress administers the National Library Service (NLS) a talking-book and Braille […]

Another benefit of the 500-word limit I impose on writers in the memoir classes I lead? Magazines, newspapers and blogs publish short pieces like that. This week I asked some of my writers for 500 words on “Witnessing Love.” Sharon Silverman was so pleased with the poignant piece she wrote about witnessing the love in […]

The essay Maggy Fauché wrote for our “The First Time I Laid Eyes on You” prompt last week was about a teenage crush. When I wondered out loud how she managed to capture those long-ago feelings so beautifully, she gave all credit to Orhan Pamuk . Orhan? I thought the crush was on a guy […]

Thank you, dear Safe & Sound blog readers. I received so many positive comments last week to the post I wrote about ways memoir-writing can be good for your brain and your soul that now, tonight, at 9 pm Central Time, I’m going to be on WGN Radio in Chicago to talk about the side […]

In the dozen or so years I’ve been leading memoir-writing classes, I always pretty much assumed that getting life episodes down on paper is good for your brain. Now studies are starting to prove it. A Creativity and Aging Study by the National Endowment for the Arts shows that writing memoir can result in the […]