resources for memoir writers

I've just finished writing the 17th edition of Juncture Notes, our memoir newsletter. My focus this time is on the development of characters in memoir. My sources are Alexie, Gay, and Ford. We'll send this out into the world in late July.

Meanwhile, we have updated our Juncture Workshops site with a compendium of the memoir resources (beyond our upcoming Longwood Gardens and Cape May, NJ, workshops) we've created over this past year. Bill has found a way to make all previous issues of Juncture Notes available for public viewing. Interviews with Paul Lisicky, Sy Montgomery, Angela Palm, Diana Abu-Jaber, Megan Stielstra, Chloe Honum, Kristen Radtke, Brian Turner, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, Dani Shapiro, and so others can be found here. So can my thoughts on issues relating to the making of memoir, my recommended reads, my homework prompts, and the work of our readers.

(If you are one of our featured readers, you can now share your work with your friends.)

We urge you to check it all out here.

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Read Juncture Notes 16 here: behind the scenes of the illustrated workbook and exquisite interview with essayist Megan Stielstra

In this issue of Juncture Notes, which can be read in its entirety here, we are privileged to have Megan Stielstra's thoughts on writing, teaching, and the many stories that bind us. Reading this interview, with its many turns and links, will give you a summer's worth of musings...and a very good reason to buy her new collection, The Wrong Way to Save Your Life.

We also go behind the scenes, in this issue, to take a look at our brand-new memoir workbook, Tell the Truth. Make It Matter., a collaborative content/illustration/design project, and something we are excited to announce has already been adopted into a high school curriculum.

Thanks to my husband, Bill, for the drawing above; it also appears in the workbook.

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how do we write with an empathetic imagination? thoughts in this weekend's Chicago Tribune

A few weeks ago, I built tall piles of my many essay collections (old and new) and began to ponder. Rediscovered favorite pieces by Annie Dillard, Patricia Hampl, Ander Monson, Rebecca Solnit, the World War II pilot memoirist Samuel Hynes, Elif Batuman, Megan Stielstra, Stephanie LaCava, Joanne Beard, others. Looked for insights into the empathetic imagination—how it has been managed over time, how essayists, historically, have gotten to the heart of hearts that aren't their own. I read, took notes, looked for patterns, began to write. It was a three-week process that produced just over 1,000 words.

I am blessed that the Chicago Tribune took interest in this piece. I am blessed, too, that I was able to share these thoughts at Bryn Mawr College this past Thursday, in the classroom of the very exquisite Professor Cynthia Reeves.

The essay will appear in this weekend's Printers Row. The online link is here.

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Like essays? Read Once I Was Cool by Megan Stielstra: My Chicago Tribune Review

I love it when I love the books the Chicago Tribune sends me to read.

Recently I had the pleasure of a Tribune-initiated introduction to Megan Stielstra, by way of her new essay collection, Once I Was Cool.

My review, which runs in this weekend's Printers Row, begins like this, below....

The world is a mess. Noisy. Prickly. Guilty. Fidgety. Hot. A case of psoriasis, holes in the ozone layer, rivers running this way and that. Who has time to make room for 29 new personal essays by Megan Stielstra, a Chicagoan whose life — as a storyteller, teacher, writer, wife, mother — is kind of messy too.

and can be read in its entirety here. 

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