100 Memoirs

The Help spent 379 days in the Amazon Top 100 list. It has 1,751 reviews on Amazon.com and rates 4.5 stars. It is a novel, but, as Lanie Tankard argues, it deserves consideration from a memoir perspective.
 
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
New York: Amy Einhorn Books (Putnam), 2009.
Available in hardcover, paperback, audiobook, CD, and Kindle editions.
Movie in [...]

 “What makes us laugh out loud?” is the question I am asking as I re-read Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. Next week I will try to answer that question for a guest post  I plan to send to Matilda Butler at the great website  Womensmemoirs.com. If you have not discovered this website, I recommend that you [...]

E. Ethelbert Miller spoke to Krista Tippett recently on her American Public Media program “Speaking of Faith.”  Tippett described the conversation as a “jazz riff,” and I think you will agree that Miller, who is poet, spiritual seeker, memoirist, and director of the Afro-American Resource Center at Howard University, weaves together a beautiful cloth melody [...]

Edward Short’s review of Mary Karr’s Lit (which I also reviewed here), contains a few paragraphs very relevant to all memoir writers. I invite you to read the complete review here. Short’s insights are brilliant.
Here are the four most relevant paragraphs to our concerns as we seek to understand the power of memoir to go beyond [...]

Sorry that I just learned about this contest today. But if you have a memoir manuscript ready to go, it won’t matter.  All you have to do is follow the guidelines at this Guide to Literary Agents website.
Good luck!

If you want to spring out of bed tomorrow morning, saying, “Good!” I suggest you read this book the night before. And if you want a role model for how to age with zest and enthusiasm, even to the extent of looking forward to death as the last great adventure, Huston Smith is your man.
I [...]

Philippe Petit has blown me away. And so has this film about his life, focused on the day in August,1974, when he walked on a cable stretched between the South Tower and North Tower of the World Trade Center.

I loved the music, graphics, and juxtapositions in this film. Petit is such a clown-like, dancer-like, Kokopelli-like [...]

Have you tried to tell your life story in just six words?  Smith magazine discovered a gold mine with this concept a few years ago and now has published several popular books listing these short narratives.
The whole concept derives from a single story. Supposedly Ernest Hemingway was challenged to tell a story in six words and chose [...]

Melanie Springer Mock wrote a very insightful comment on my review of Mennonite in a Little Black Dress. I learned that she teaches memoir writing at George Fox University, which led me to request a copy of her syllabus. She was kind enough to share it. So I include it in its entirety below. A [...]

As you know, the goal of this blog is self-education in public.  I am trying to learn about memoir by reading and reviewing great examples of the genre, books about the genre, and offering some mini-memoir on the way. When readers search for good memoir reading lists, I want them to find this blog. What [...]