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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...

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Self-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...

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My 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,...

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Let 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...

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A 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...

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Is 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...

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Teaching 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....

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Memoir 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...

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Lord 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...

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Author 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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