![]() ![]() Why do these stories resonate with readers?īecause the writers use their personal experiences to elucidate something universal. Tara Westover’s Educated, about being raised by survivalists and not setting foot in a classroom until the age of seventeen Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries, about growing up on a reservation Stephanie Land’s Maid, about her time working as a house cleaner and struggling to provide for her daughter and Kiese Laymon’s Heavy, about a Black boy growing up in the South and grappling with weight, trauma, and societal failings, are a few that come to mind. The non-celebrity literary memoir is as much about exceptional storytelling and craft as it is about having an interesting life.Ĭan you name recent memoirs that exemplify the best of the genre? But if you’re not a celebrity, you have to rely on artistry to drum up the interest that’s inherent in stories of famous people’s exploits. That’s not true anymore, though celebrity memoirs still hold strong on the bestseller lists - Michelle Obama’s Becoming has sold more than ten million copies so far. No! Memoir used to be almost exclusively written by famous, influential people as a way to cement their legacies. You don’t have to be famous to write a memoir, right? A great memoir articulates something about being human and it will resonate with readers regardless of whether their lives look anything like the writer’s. I don’t say it to be mean! But I often find myself explaining that just having an experience - no matter how shocking or unusual - is not enough. A big part of my job is telling people that the worst or most powerful thing that ever happened to them sounds boring. ![]() It’s important to have a good story to tell, but there has to be more to it than merely recounting the events of your life. It’s all about that alchemy of transforming the raw material of experience into something special. We dig into how to shape personal experience into narrative, and the ways in which a story can start to take on its own life. One of my favorites is a class for writers with a book project already underway. I teach classes for writers from different backgrounds and at all levels. Tell us a little about your writing classes. She is the editor of Burn It Down, a new anthology of essays on women’s anger, and is working on her own memoir, Negative Space. Lilly Dancyger ’12JRN edits personal essays and memoirs for two online publications and a literary press, and she teaches classes on memoir writing. ![]()
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