This Memoir Anthology is our online magazine where we publish the best memoir stories that come to us. We have been working with writers since 1989.
In these three decades plus, we have helped bring thousands of memoirs to life—in tele-classes and workshops, in coaching sessions, and via editing and thousands more via all our resources such as the free My Memoir Education and items in our bookstore.
These writers have produced terrific stories about love and abandonment, about careers and reanimating deadend lives, about racial and ethnic diversity and conflict.
Many of these stories can serve as inspiring memoir models for your writing. In this category, we also include interviews we have done with writers and posts which they have written on their writing process.
We have conceived of the Memoir Anthology as having two functions:
~ we want it to be a repository for the hard-earned achievements that so many of the writers we have worked with and of others who have communicated with us have created.
~ we also know that writers sometimes wonder what is possible in memoir writing. If this is you, our Memoir Anthology is a place for you to read what your fellow writers have accomplished. After reading, write your stories and submit your best to us.
Whenever there is a published book from which the excerpt in the Memoir Anthology was taken, we link to it and hope that you will encourage your fellow writers by purchasing their memoir.
Our Reading “map”
Below, you will find a full list of all our anthology publications. In addition, to help you navigate your way to that part of the Memoir Anthology that would be of most interest to you, we have divided the excerpts into three sections:
~ For stories from writers with whom we have worked, click here.
~ To read what our Editors & our Associate Memoir Professionals have written, click here.
~ Friends who have come to us from many sources have also sent us excerpted stories. Click here for their contributions.
Your publication path
When you are ready, we would like to review your memoir snippet for inclusion in our anthology of great memoir excerpts. Be sure to write a note to us to tell us who you are.
~ Send us your story.
Remember: whatever you do today, write a bit on your memoir.
Hot Flash Memoir: Family Photo Album
This is how I learned about hot flash memoir. As I was cleaning out my parent’s house I made all kinds of discoveries. Like most kids (I’m referring to myself here), I never once thought of my parents as people. They were Mom and Dad. What they did before me really never entered my mind. […]
Listening to Grief: The Boys Laugh Again
Eyes squeezed tightly shut, I listen for the laughter of my two grandsons as I drift on my rubber raft. I’m certain if I’m silent and try hard enough I’ll hear the laughter of the boys again. Glimpses of summer days when we laughed together flash through my mind. One day, we linked our three […]
Mining Memoir Depths: Spelunking of the Mind
I enjoy many forms of physical exercise, from climbing mountains, to backpacking along trails, to bicycling, and even swimming. But mostly nowadays I just go hiking, sometimes with my grandchildren and partner, but often alone. Working the muscles of my body is good for me and helps keep my joints working. I feel better after […]
Becoming an American—Why Not?
DL— Stories about immigration and citizenship form the backbone of our great American story as much today as in past times. My ancestors were among the millions who came here in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Here is an excerpt about becoming an American from We Were Not Spoiled, the memoir of my mother […]
Cindy Doucette’s Memoir Has A Powerful Impact.
Cindy Doucette (Berwick Maine) has seen her poignant story depicted in It Can Happen To Any Family used by the juvenile correctional system of York County, Maine, to effect turn arounds in young people. Below is a testimonial written by a young person who was in the correctional system and who is testifying to the […]
Working in Saudi Arabia
DL: The following is a guest post by a write who co-incidently bears the family name of Guest—Colin Guest. It presents his first days working in Saudi Arabia. The excerpt is form Follow in the Tigerman’s Footsteps / The Memoirs of a Serial Expat. On my arrival at Jeddah Airport, now called the King Abdulaziz […]
Drug Addiction: An Excerpt From It Can Happen In Any Family
The shock I had first experienced at hearing of Candice’s death had given way to overwhelming sadness. I had lost my daughter, my daughter in whom I had placed so many hopes when she was a baby and a little girl.
From A Blind Date to A Matchless Marriage
Editor: The following is an excerpt from Walter Linder’s labor union memoir, A Life of Labor and Love / A Red Memoir. When I reached my early twenties, I was convinced I was too shy to ever get married. Although I had gone out on dates with various women, nothing had clicked. At 24, I […]
Retiring to Memoir Writing: Justine Powell Kuntz
Eight years ago as a retirement project for church, I introduced memoir writing…