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#memoir

11 posts11 participants0 posts today
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g_alex_ylovestoread

Hello readers and writers!
I hope that this helps you. My comments are on, and I’d love any feedback you have to offer.

@bookstodon #writer #reader #memoir

purposefulprose.org/post/writi

Purposeful Prose · Writing Your Memoir: Finding the ThemeIf you have written your memoir, are writing your memoir, or are contemplating the idea of writing your memoir, congratulations. Telling your story is a vulnerable undertaking, especially if this is your first foray into writing a book.The crux of a good memoir is in its storytelling. You, as the author, are responsible for fleshing out the people and events in your life as characters, reflections, and perceptions. Even before building up all of that, what is your foundation?Your readers are sel
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נאריש זשלאָב מענטש

"Whenever the #author and #playwright Samantha Ellis tries to define her heritage to people, she often finds them correcting her. “So many times I’ve said I’m an #Iraqi #Jew and been… told ‘you mean you’re mixed’ or ‘which parent is which?’ or just ‘how weird’,” she writes in her richly detailed #memoir, in which she explores the complex, centuries-old history of the Iraqi-#Jewish community and its vanishing language, #Judeo-Iraqi #Arabic.

The daughter of Iraqi-Jewish #refugees who came separately to #London with their families during periods of persecution for the community in #Baghdad, Ellis is moved to seek out #stories, expressions and objects that will fill some of the gaps in that #history when she realises that she lacks the vocabulary to pass on the language of her childhood to her own young son."

theguardian.com/books/2025/apr

The Guardian · Chopping Onions on my Heart by Samantha Ellis review – an Iraqi Jew’s celebration of an endangered cultureBy Stephanie Merritt
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Kristie

A view and a thank you!

While I'm not ready to be in front of the camera, here's a sincere thank you from behind it. If you like Scottish landscapes, Scottish accents, and gratitude, you'll enjoy this.

instagram.com/reel/DII51K9CMcs

#DebutAuthor
#Memoir
#ScottishBooks
#WorkingClassWriters
#MixedRaceWriters
#NeurodivergentWriters
#SmallPressPublishing
#BooksOfMastodon
#PlaceWriting
#DrystoneWalling
#Bookstodon
#Books
#Scotland

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Kristie

Yesterday it was the memoirs page. Today my book’s top of Bookshop. org’s *main* Biography & Memoir list.

(right next to Jenni Fagan (Scotland represent!) and a bit under Marcus Aurelius!)

No PR machine. Just people getting behind a working-class Scottish debut

If you’ve been thinking about it, now’s the time:

uk.bookshop.org/p/books/drysto

Now I’m off to build a wall.

Screenshot of Bookshop.org’s Biography & Memoir category front page. Shows Drystone: A Life Rebuilt by Kristie De Garis listed on the bottom row, next to titles by Jenni Fagan, Raynor Winn, and Marcus Aurelius, among others.
#Scotland#Books#Bookstodon
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idealist at heart

the tone of ‘careless people’ by sarah wynn-williams - a memoir about her time at facebook - is light, conversational, often self-deprecating and at times simply funny, but the content isn’t.

in hindsight, i believe the power of ‘careless people’ lies in this ‘light’ tone. it reminds me of a quote from the art of war: all warfare is deception.

full review: idealistatheart.com/careless-p

#book #books #bookstodon #memoir
#socialmedia #nonfiction #amreading #reading #meta #facebook

cover of the nonfiction book 'careless people' by sarah wynn-williams
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Niklas

"1 SUMMER OF LOVE

I was driving through the pitch black Virginia night, down the perfectly flat blacktop that was once a railroad track, across that high bridge over the ravine, thinking about the details of how one night I was going to drive off it. I was sure I'd never live to the age of eighteen, so I never bothered making any plans for the future. Eighteen had come and gone a year ago, but I was still breathing. And things were only getting worse.

The summer of 1982. That disgusting, sticky, humid weather where your back soaks through your shirt just from taking a short drive. By midsummer everything was a mess. My sister Liz's boyfriend flipped out in our kitchen one night and attacked me with a butcher knife. Soon after, Liz tried to kill herself for the first of many times. Swallowed a bunch of pills. Her heart stopped the moment we got her to the hospital, but they were able to revive her.

Pretty soon after that, Liz and my mom went out of town to visit relatives and I found my father's dead body lying there sideways on my parents' bed, fully dressed in his usual shirt and tie, with his feet almost on the floor, like he just sat down to die at fifty-one. I tried to learn CPR from the 911 operator on the phone, carrying my father's already-stiff body across the bedroom floor. It was weird touching him. That was the first time we had any physical contact that I could remember, other than the occasional cigarette burn on my arm while squeezing by him in the hallway.

I figured driving off the bridge might be the best way to deal with the crushing, lost, and empty feeling of being me. A dramatic way to go, of course. I was a kid. Later in life it would usually be a gun I imagined using on myself. Not quite as dramatic as driving off a bridge in your hometown. You can chart my development this way. In more recent years I would think about pills most often. That dramatic stuff is for kids. I'm mature now.

At the end of the summer, which I had already started referring to as The Summer of Love, I drove my gold '71 Chevy Nova away from home for the first time. I had bought the car that I called 'Old Gold', complete with a stop sign used in place of its rusted-out floorboard, for a hundred bucks from my hot, blonde cousin Jennifer, who years later would die on the plane that hit The Pentagon, September 11, 2001. She was a flight attendant. Sent a postcard from Dulles airport that morning that read 'Ain't Life Grand?' in big letters on the front.

My father worked at The Pentagon back around the time I was born. If I believed in curses, I'd have to wonder if the plane hit the part of the building where my father's office once was. But I don't believe in curses. Life is full of ups and downs. There have been some extremes in my life's case but, considering I had no plan, and very little of the kind of self-esteem you need to get by in this world, things could be worse. I'm just wandering through here, seeing what happens.

I don't know what happens when you die and I don't expect to find out until I die. Probably nothing, but you never know. For now, I'm still alive, and I've come to realize that some of the most horrible moments of my life have led to some of the best, so I'm not one for eating up people's melodrama. Just another day to me."

— Mark Oliver Everett: Things the Grandchildren Should Know, pp. 1-3

Mark Oliver Everett: Things the Grandchildren Should Know (Hardcover, 2007, Little, Brown)
#MarkOliverEverett#reading#memoir
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Fern

New blog post up in which I try to do Past Me a solid. Neurodivergence, regret, and Apple stock, all in one little bundle for ya.

I'm new to memoir and don't know what I'm doing. Though I wouldn't normally publish a letter, part of why I chose to publish this one is in the hopes that somebody sees themselves in part of it, and finds something that helps them. Maybe that somebody is you.

The URL is abysmal. But the letter is okay.

open.substack.com/pub/fernbuil

An ocular scan of a patient with birdshot uveitis. There is a radar-shaped overlay on top of an angry-looking wash of reds, oranges, yellows, and greens, which indicate various stages of inflammation. The text reads: Title: Life Sentences Subtitle: Wherein I blow the Temporal Prime Directive to absolute bits
#Today#WritingCommunity#memoir
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Kristie

This one was hard.

I wrote about being the wrong kind of victim.

The kind who stayed. The kind who didn't call the police. The kind who texted three days after.

And yes, it might make you feel uncomfortable, but it's the experience of many, many victims. So important to understand.

kristie-de-garis.ghost.io/not-

By Hand · Not The Right Kind Of VictimMost of my friends will learn about many things for the first time when they read my book. Not because I was hiding them. Not exactly. But because the kind of trauma I carry doesn’t naturally come up in conversation. It’s not neat. It cannot be told between
#Writing#Women#Scotland
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(((Cindy Weinstein)))

It was an honor to be a panelist on #Dementia Stories for Impact: Dementia Life Course and Storytelling, sponsored by the #AlzheimersAssociation and #UCSF. My fellow authors and colleagues talked about the importance of #narrative, #empathy, #brain health, and Dr. Bruce Miller and I talked about our work together on my #memoir, Finding the Right Words: A Story of Literature, Grief, and the Brain. I hope you find this discussion helpful.

lnkd.in/g-mgqkkN

#EndAlz
#Caregiving

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