Exclusive Interview with Xujun Eberlein Part 2
When I was young, whenever I read a new expression or adage in a newspaper or book, I hand-copied it into a notebook and made my own customized lexicon. That was how I acquired a large Chinese...
View ArticleSelf-image changes in step with society
by Jerry Waxler Henry Louis Gates, author of the memoir “Colored People,” grew up in Piedmont, a small town in the northeastern corner of West Virginia. The town was geographically in a hollow, and...
View ArticleMy Day at a Writer’s Conference – or – The Benefits of Showing Up
The keynote speech turned out to be invigorating and freeing. Beth Kephart, whose work I did not know, started as a memoir writer, who, as her career proceeded, extended her writing to other forms,...
View ArticleLet Your Memoir Take You to the Fourth Step
Now, as I study memoir writing, I believe I have stumbled upon another connection with the Twelve Steps. The Fourth Step says, "We made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves." The goal...
View ArticleA Healthy Community Needs a Healthy Writer’s Group
A regional writing group in which I participate recently asked me to contribute to an application for a 501c3 status as a non-profit community organization. Since this is a topic about which I have...
View ArticleIs memoir a genre? Consider these matched pairs.
After I finished, I noticed a similar book near the top of my reading pile, "Black, White, and Jewish," by Rebecca Walker. Previously, I might have rejected it on the premise that one memoir about...
View ArticleTeaching Memoirs, Meeting Locals, Making Memories
All the memoir classes I had taught previously were broken into two hour segments. This workshop would go for eight hours straight, so one challenge would be to tailor the course to this new format....
View ArticleMemoir author speaks of spirituality, religion, and cancer
I think it's far more effective to describe the big stuff of life -- spiritual struggles, traumas and wounds, giant yearnings or losses -- by entering through the backdoor. By that, I mean you can...
View ArticleLord of the Flies in Los Angeles: The terrible logic of uncivilized boys
William Golding's book "Lord of the Flies" created a sense of terror at the Shadow Side that lurks within the human heart. Salzman did the opposite. He showed me a glimpse of compassion where I least...
View ArticleAuthor and creative writing teacher helps me steer between fact and fiction
My characters are not composites, although I suppose they are sometimes inspired by particular traits I do observe in people in the real world. My characters seem like real people to me, and so I often...
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