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.
Memoir From an Abuse Survivor Joy Willows
Many people thought I must have struggled and suffered while writing my book. However, that is far from the truth…
Lightning or When Young Love Strikes
It was the summer the city burned. The weather was dry and hot, but the real tinder was a mixture of frustration and anger, white and black, promises and demands. If I paused to consider these things, the pause was imperceptible. I stood at the edge of the pool contemplating…
A Grandmother Story: Nothing Broken
In this grandmother story, I look back on the life of my mother’s mother.
“Look at this,” my grandmother said. “Not a tooth broken.”
We kids looked at the comb. We were not impressed. This grandmother story had to offer more!
“I made this when I was 8 years old.”
I looked again. Now I was impressed. I was 8 years old, and I had no idea how to make a comb. This one was big, maybe eight inches long, thick and creamy white. Indeed, not a tooth was broken. It looked nothing like the flimsy black plastic one my father carried in his pocket. My grandmother kept this one in the top drawer of her dresser with her small assortment of jewelry. This grandmother story impressed me for sure. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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My Grandmother’s Depression Story
The usual person gets four natural grandparents. Naturally, I got five. Or six. And for this Depression story, they were all in one body.
Both of my father’s parents passed away before I was born, victims of his absence during World War II as he fought the Germans on their own soil. My mother’s father died when I was six months old, a coincidence I believe, or so I have been told. [Free Membership required to read more. See below. ]
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We Move to a New Home
My parents must have had little hope of ever putting aside enough money for a down payment to buy a house of their own. We were still in the three-bedroom apartment on Shawmut Street when…