Subscribe to Blog via Email
Search the site
Recent Comments
- Maureen E. Mulvihill, PhD. Princeton Research Forum, NJ. on “And I know that I must go on doing this dance on hot bricks till I die.”
- kjumai on “There is a notion that creative people are absent-minded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations.”
- bababhuvaneshus on “Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically arranged; life is a luminous halo . . .”
- Owen Landsverk on 10 Best Books for College Teachers Update
- Alex on “Judging by her publicity photos, the natural assumption would be that American novelist Edith Wharton wrote in a traditional manner, at the gold-tooled leather-topped desk in her extremely well-stocked library.”
Categories
-
Recent Posts
- “Every story has a moral, Doherty used to say, but most have more than two.”
- “When I was 4 months pregnant and suffering from morning sickness, I was . . . thrown into a filthy, windowless, smelly horse stall.”
- “Think mystery, not mastery.”
- “I’ve sometimes wondered whether novelists like to be remembered for what they’ve said or because they’ve said it in their own particular way – in their own distinctive voice.”
- “You have to give yourself the space to write a lot without a destination.”
Tags
- a favorite author
- a favorite novelist
- Anne Tyler
- Annie Dillard
- Ann Patchett
- Barbara Pym
- British humor
- Charles Dickens
- Courage to Teach
- depression
- Discussion in the College Classroom
- Elizabeth Strout
- Henry David Thoreau
- Henry Taylor
- iGen
- Jane Smiley
- Karl Ove Knausgaard
- Learner-Centered Teaching
- learning
- Margaret Atwood
- Mary Oliver
- Memoir
- metaphors
- My Struggle
- Nobel Prize
- Parker Palmer
- pedagogy
- poetry
- Pulitzer Prize
- Pulitzer Prize winner
- Rainer Maria Rilke
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
- recommended
- Reflection
- Richard Russo
- Shakespeare
- Small Teaching
- Ted Kooser
- The Spark of Learning
- truth
- Virginia Woolf
- Walt Whitman
- William Stafford
- William Zinsser
- you-are-there reading
A Fine Line
Archives
- May 2024
- April 2024
- March 2024
- February 2024
- January 2024
- December 2023
- November 2023
- October 2023
- September 2023
- August 2023
- July 2023
- June 2023
- May 2023
- April 2023
- March 2023
- February 2023
- January 2023
- December 2022
- November 2022
- October 2022
- September 2022
- August 2022
- July 2022
- June 2022
- May 2022
- April 2022
- March 2022
- February 2022
- January 2022
- December 2021
- November 2021
- October 2021
- September 2021
- August 2021
- July 2021
- June 2021
- May 2021
- April 2021
- March 2021
- February 2021
- January 2021
- December 2020
- November 2020
- October 2020
- September 2020
- August 2020
- July 2020
- June 2020
- May 2020
- April 2020
- March 2020
- February 2020
- January 2020
- December 2019
- November 2019
- October 2019
- September 2019
- August 2019
- July 2019
- June 2019
- May 2019
- April 2019
- March 2019
- February 2019
- January 2019
- December 2018
- November 2018
- October 2018
- September 2018
- August 2018
- July 2018
- June 2018
- May 2018
- April 2018
- March 2018
- February 2018
- January 2018
- December 2017
- November 2017
- October 2017
- September 2017
- August 2017
- July 2017
- June 2017
- May 2017
- April 2017
- March 2017
- February 2017
- January 2017
- December 2016
- November 2016
- October 2016
- September 2016
- August 2016
- July 2016
- June 2016
- May 2016
- April 2016
- March 2016
- February 2016
- January 2016
- December 2015
- November 2015
- October 2015
- September 2015
- August 2015
- July 2015
- June 2015
- May 2015
- April 2015
- March 2015
- February 2015
- January 2015
- December 2014
- November 2014
- October 2014
- September 2014
- August 2014
- July 2014
- June 2014
- May 2014
- April 2014
- March 2014
- February 2014
- January 2014
- December 2013
- November 2013
- October 2013
Category Archives: memoir
“I began to think that some of us are the designated rememberers.”
I always begin my “How to Write Your Memoirs” classes by asking, “Why do you want to do this?” No one has ever answered the question like novelist Pat Conroy does in this collection of essays about writing memoirs. Conroy … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged designated rememberers, Pat Conroy, Why We Write about Ourselves
Leave a comment
“I believe large numbers of people have at least some talent as writers and storytellers, and that those talents can be strengthened and sharpened.”
I nearly fell off my chair when I read this statement in Stephen King’s book On Writing. It provides such a sharp contrast to the 20 other books I’ve been reading on the subject of writing memoirs. Because I’m working … Continue reading
“It seemed to me that if I could stir, if I could move to take the next step, I could go out into the poem the way I could go out into that snow.”
Were my reading assignments interesting? Moving? Inspiring? These are the questions I ask myself after teaching literature classes. I hope my students will experience the sort of engagement that Eudora Welty describes here. She writes about spending an afternoon in … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged engaged reader, Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings, Pulitzer Prize winner
Leave a comment
“Antiracist ideas argue that racist policies are the cause of racial inequities.”
It is easier to blame people for making mistakes than it is to consider the role that policies play in determining outcomes. Ibram X. Kendi writes, “Americans have long been trained to see the deficiencies of people rather than policy” … Continue reading
Posted in memoir, non-fiction
Tagged antiracist, How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi, Memoir, Race
Leave a comment
“What my father wanted to cast from me wasn’t a demon: it was me.”
To say that Tara Westover’s dad demanded complete obedience to his rules and doctrine would be an understatement. When one of his children disobeyed, he assumed it could be due to one thing only: the work of the devil. He … Continue reading
“But what is the truth of our social existence?”
Why would anyone invest a large percentage of their reading time in Knausgaard’s 3600-page novel? Is it worth it? I started reading it because I was curious about this Norwegian writer’s experiment with a new form of writing, which emphasizes … Continue reading
Posted in fiction, memoir
Tagged admired novelist, Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle, new kind of novel, Norwegian writer
Leave a comment
Best Books of 2018: Five Favorites
The books I have recommended most often to my friends this year are: Pioneers! Strong families! Resourcefulness! I’ve always been drawn to the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and I’ve often recommended her books to those who are learning to … Continue reading
“To live the complete human catastrophe is terrible indeed, but to write about it?”
Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian writer who conducted a public experiment. He wanted to see what would happen if he wrote honestly about his life, aiming to “penetrate that whole series of conceptions and ideas and images that hang … Continue reading
Posted in fiction, memoir
Tagged experimentation in writing, extraordinary literature, Genius, Karl Ove Knausgaard, My Struggle
Leave a comment
“By turning the experiment of life into a heroic task he was able to turn Walden from a philosophical tract of unattainable goals into a guide for the perplexed.”
Jeffrey Cramer argues that if you read Henry David Thoreau’s Walden as an autobiographical record, you are bound to be disappointed. (After all, Thoreau was selective about what he included, and the bits he didn’t write about – such as … Continue reading
Posted in fiction, memoir
Tagged guide for the perplexed, Henry David Thoreau, Jeffrey S. Cramer, mythology, Walden
Leave a comment
“I can still see the frame of the arch between the living room and the hall bending maniacally the closer I approached.”
Hisham Matar, author of The Return, continues his description of the year after his father had been kidnapped by Qaddafi’s supporters, when the family didn’t know whether the father was dead or alive. “Any repetitive movement increased my heartbeat. Looking … Continue reading
Posted in memoir, non-fiction
Tagged 2017 Pulitzer Prize Biography, alientation, anxiety, Hisham Matar, The Return
Leave a comment
“As we discover, we remember; remembering, we discover.”
How can a writer who spent all but six years of her life in the same house, living what she herself describes as a “sheltered life,” create such astonishing fiction? In her memoir, One Writer’s Beginnings, Eudora Welty answers this … Continue reading
“There are many of us who need to reprocess our garbage, but who can’t bear the idea of writing memoir . . .”
Jessica Lourey continues: “. . . whether it’s because we are too close to the trauma, don’t want to hurt or be hurt by those we’re writing about, or simply prefer the vehicle of fiction.” Students in my classes on … Continue reading
Posted in memoir
Tagged Challenges with Memoir, Fiction vs. memoir, Jessica Lourey, Rewrite Your Life
Leave a comment
“When I was younger, anxiety sometimes flat-out crippled my ability to work.”
In every class I teach, there is at least one student who will talk with me at some point about how high levels of anxiety are preventing him or her from completing assignments. This memoir by Andrea Petersen provides a … Continue reading
“We have to keep making choices, keep transforming.”
Some memoirists see themselves as products of their times. Others see themselves in terms of the obstacles they surmounted or movements they created. Samantha Ellis measures herself against the strongest women who live between the covers of novels. Her approach … Continue reading