A Journey Through Healing – Petals of Rain by Rica Keenum
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January 21, 2020

Taking a girl’s voice is the same as taking her power. Petals of Rain: A Mother’s Memoir by Rica Keenum is a memoir about love and loss, secrets and lies. When a young girl from a broken family meets a charming man, she attempts to build a new life. But after a whirlwind marriage and the birth of two sons, their love story rips apart… [Read More]

Memoir as Synecdoche
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May 8, 2018

If you are an author of memoir, then you know the story isn’t entirely about you. It’s about the reader. Taking the “me” out of memoir is important if you seek publication for your story. If you use the pronoun “I” in every sentence you actually create a division between you and the reader. Imagine the difference between these two passages. The trees formed a… [Read More]

Untitled Town Book Festival April 28-30 in Green Bay
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April 25, 2017

A new book festival brings Sherman Alexie and Margaret Atwood to the Packer’s Title Town the end of this month. Untitled Town Book and Author Festival is the first event of its kind for the greater Green Bay area and plans to unite readers, writers, podcasters, storytellers, publishers, books, and Packer fans. Alexie and Atwood are not the only big name authors who are featured… [Read More]

Three Writing Workshops in February at Cayuga Nature Center
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January 19, 2013

Cayuga Nature Center sits on 100 acres overlooking the  largest of the Finger Lakes with a lodge built by the Civilian Conservation Corps in the 1930s as a “preventorium,” a temporary home for families members of tuberculosis patients at the nearby “sanatorium” (near the present Cayuga Medical Center). The lodge, recently renovated, is quiet and comfortable in the winter months. Writing workshops are being offered for… [Read More]

Memoir and memories: unvarnished truth
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October 20, 2012

Many memoir writers worry prematurely about the people they plan to write about and whether they might take offense or be hurt by recollections and revelations of past events. Stop worrying. Start writing. Give them something to talk about, as Bonnie Raitt sings. For those who struggle to sit down and inscribe their personal memories, the internal editor kicks in as soon as they pick… [Read More]

Writing Memoir: Getting Started
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October 13, 2012

Where to begin? Getting clarity on the genre of memoir is a good start. Then writing one memory. It can be intimidating to think of writing your life story beginning at your birth. So, don’t write autobiography. The classical forms of autobiography are called apologia, oration, and confession. Apologia are written as self-justifications for one’s actions. Orations are written to document one’s literary talents in… [Read More]

The importance of narrative arc in non-fiction and memoir
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September 15, 2012

Blame Aristotle.  Blame classical Greek culture. Blame all of Western Civilization. But every story must have a beginning, middle, and end. And more than that. Without narrative structure, a non-fiction book is just a boring recitation of one thing after another. You may think because your book is based on your real life experiences (memoir), historical events, scientific experimentation, or natural observations that you don’t… [Read More]

Reimagining Life after Loss: Jai Pausch’s Dream New Dreams
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July 31, 2012

Dream New Dreams: Reimagining My Life After Loss by Jai Pausch (Crown 2012) is one of the first memoirs to address the experiences of those who become full time caregivers to their terminally ill spouse. Imagine dealing with complicated medical care and even more complicated emotions. And then imagine having to tell your young children that their father is dead. You may have heard of… [Read More]

Strayed from expectations: Wild
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July 10, 2012

The buzz about Cheryl Strayed’s new memoir, Wild, couldn’t be ignored. If Oprah Winfrey brought back her Book Club just because of this manuscript, I knew I had to read it. Most everything Oprah recommended I’d read before she announced the selection. But Wild was a wild card thrown in my direction. The jacket described this book about the rough experiences on the Pacific Crest… [Read More]

Book Review: Unorthodox by Deborah Feldman
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May 29, 2012

Unorthodox: The Scandalous Rejection of My Hasidic Roots (Simon & Schuster, 2012) is Deborah Feldman’s memoir of growing up in Brooklyn in the most insular of Chasidic sects, the Satmars. Fathered by the village idiot and abandoned by her mother, Feldman is raised by her grandparents, a bride at 17, a mother at 19, and a divorcee at 22—at which age she enrolls in Sarah… [Read More]