Our Memoir Professionals are writers who have found a voice in creating their stories and books as clear in the following Memoir Professionals’ Stories & Articles Anthology
They have turned to teaching, coaching, editing and /or ghostwriting memoirs as a way of sharing their considerable skills and talents.
In this section, we are pleased to offer you an anthology of our Memoir Professionals’ Stories & Articles.
We have had Memoir Professionals from not only the US and Canada, but from countries as far flung as Australia, South Africa, England, Hungary, Israel, Zimbabwe, Ireland and Jamaica. While not all have submitted stories to the blog anthology, all are people who love to write.
In conclusion
Perhaps you are a writer who has wondered how to share your love of memoir with others. Besides publication which is a primary contact source with an audience, we feel that teaching, coaching and editing are also very important in sharing our great love of memoir writing.
Visit our Memoir Professional home page right now.
How The Memoir Network Evolved
The Memoir Network evolved with thought. Its services—which are necessary for the success of writers and of the Memoir Network—grew regularly over a decade.
Giving the Memoir Workshop Structure. Winging It Doesn’t Work
The Curriculum Manual focuses on the memoir workshop structure. “Winging it” has a certain value at times, but structure always leads to faster learning.
My Love Story with Memoir Writing: How I Started to Teach Memoir Workshops
In October of 1988, following upon the publication of my book of short stories, What Became of Them and Other Stories from Franco America, I was asked to read from this collection of autobiographical fiction to a group of foster grandparents. It was to prove how I started to teach memoir workshops.
It seemed good marketing to present to another group of people—potential book buyers. The reading would also give me an opportunity to send in a release to the local newspaper.
I accepted the invitation, but not without some hesitation. Might this group be too small?
Mary, the woman who coordinated the meeting, had told me however that, after my book program, she was confident many people in the room—Franco-Americans themselves— would want to hear the stories and share theirs. At that time, I had no mind to teach a memoir workshop.
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Retiring to Memoir Writing: Justine Powell Kuntz
Editor’s note: We came across this guest article published by Justine Kuntz back in 2013, and were so taken with her story of retiring to memoir writing that we decided to publish it again. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did and that it inspires reflections on your own life and memoir.
Eight years ago as a retirement project for church, I introduced memoir writing at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Boca Raton, FL. Earlier, after twenty-two years of teaching English, I chose to flee the regimen of teaching and accepted a position in the business world. The new position required learning more about computers than what I had used in the classroom but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise when I fully retired nine years later. While in business, I had missed teaching, so developing a curriculum for memoir writing made me feel at home once again and helped ease me into retirement and doing what I loved most—teaching.
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The Spirit of Villarosa: A Father’s Extraordinary Adventures / A Son’s Challenge
Libby Atwater is a memoir writer and long supporter of The Memoir Network. It is our pleasure to share her excellent work with you.
By Horace Dade Ashton and Marc Ashton with Libby J. Atwater
When Marc Ashton was kidnapped at gunpoint in Haiti, he fought to survive. Accosted by four armed thugs, Marc realized how life changes in moments. He made two promises: he would escape his captors, and he would tell his father’s amazing life story. I am proud to have helped tell the stories of both these men in this memoir of a kidnapping.
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She Loves Her, Yeah, Yeah, Yeah
Who were these Beatles, anyway? Everyone was screaming. Everyone, even Betsy, sitting next to me. Betsy was screaming her brains out. I stared at her in disbelief. But as I looked around Park Theater, the only movie theater in the Caldwells, the very green end-of-the-line little towns on the long boulevard that stretches from the […]
There Goes the Neighborhood, Part 1
Gunnar was mowing his field. This was odd. He never mowed his field. He was making ever-tightening circles around the knobby acre, the sweet grass and raggedy weeds falling in neat windrows behind him.
Pudgy: A Childhood Memoir
When I was ten, I ran away. I packed everything that was important into my sturdy cardboard suitcase. I left a note on the kitchen table warning my parents not to look for me at the high-tension wires, those metal electrical towers that marked the back border of our property and which were in fact […]
Childhood Memories: The Price of Happiness
In 1953, we left our one-bedroom basement apartment on 7th Street in Toronto to live in the small town of Tottenham, Ontario. We moved into a three-bedroom flat above a hardware store. There was no central heat or hot water, but I thought it was a palace, compared to the tiny apartment we had left. The centre of activity was the huge kitchen, where a massive Finlay wood stove kept us warm in the winter months. Pale green cabinets sprawled along the opposite wall. They came to an end at the four-burner Frigidaire range. Every week, my mother would get down on her hands and knees and apply a coat of Johnson’s paste wax onto the green-and-white checkered linoleum floor. When we arrived home from school, my brother Stephen and I would delight in wrapping old rags on our feet and “skate” all over the floor, bringing it to a glossy sheen. This was my mother’s Tom Sawyer act, and it worked every time. I have fond childhood memories of this time. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]