We all have a story to tell...
Join us this month in celebrating National Write Down Your Story Day through this collection of memoirs & stories from people around the world!
Start writing your own story with the help of these books on the writing essentials!
Stories We Tell Ourselves: 'Dream Life' and 'Seeing Things' by
Stories We Tell Ourselves is a marvelous inquiry into what dreams can tell us about ourselves-in short, that some vast part of our experience, cut off from us and made unconscious, can be plumbed by anyone who is curious and persistent enough to pursue the enigmatic language of dreams.-Annie Rogers, author, The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma
A Latino Memoir: Exploring Identity, Family, and the Common Good by
In a bumpy, anxiety-producing plane ride across the Straits of Florida to Cuba in 1979, graduate student Gerald Poyo knew his life would either end that day in the World War II-era prop airplane or change forever. He survived the trip, and his ten-day visit solidified his academic research and confirmed his career as a history professor. In this wide-ranging examination of his relatives' migrations in the Western Hemisphere-the Americas-over five generations, Poyo uses his training as a historian to unearth his family's stories. Beginning with his great-great grandfather's flight from Cuba to Key West in 1869, this is also about the loss of a beloved homeland.His father was Cuban; his mother was from Flint, Michigan. Poyo himself was six months old when his parents took him to Bogotá, Colombia. He celebrated his eighth birthday in New Jersey and his tenth in Venezuela. He was 12 when he landed in Buenos Aires, where he spent his formative years before returning to the United States for college. "My heart belonged to the south, but somehow I knew I could not escape the north," he writes. Transnationalism shaped his life and identity. Divided into two parts, the first section traces his parents and ancestors as he links their stories to impersonal movements in the world-Spanish colonialism, Cuban nationalism, United States expansionism-that influenced their lives. The second half explores how exile, migration and growing up a "hemispheric American, a borderless American" impacted his own development and stimulated questions about poverty, religion and relations between Latin America and the United States. Ultimately, this thought-provoking memoir unveils the universal desire for a safe, stable life for one's family.
Ordinary Days, a Memoir by
The memoir Ordinary Days by the scholar and critic Leo Ou-fan Lee and his wife Esther Lee Yuk Ying brings to this Hong Kong series an intensely personal touch, consciously echoing the great sentimental memoir of the eighteenth century, Shen Fu's Six Chapters of a Floating Life. With disarming candour, Leo and Esther lay bare their hearts to share with us their story of love and suffering, charting in a series of memorable chapters their shared spiritual quest. Set partly against the recent backdrop of some of Hong Kong's most turbulent years, partly in the far-flung diaspora of the Chinese intelligentsia, this is a revealing record of the inner life of a highly cultivated modern Chinese couple.
Becoming the Story by
The September 11 attacks produced great changes in journalism and the lives of the people who practiced it. Foreign reporters felt surrounded by the hate of American colleagues for "the enemy." Americans in combat areas became literal targets of anti-U.S. sentiment. Behind the lines, editors and bureau chiefs scrambled to reorient priorities while feeling the pressure of sending others into danger. Becoming the Story examines the transformation of war reporting in the decade after 9/11. Lindsay Palmer delves into times when print or television correspondents themselves received intense public scrutiny because of an incident associated with the work of war reporting. Such instances include Daniel Pearl's kidnapping and murder; Bob Woodruff's near-fatal injury in Iraq; the expulsions of Maziar Bahari and Nazila Fathi from Iran in 2009; the sexual assault of Lara Logan; and Marie Colvin's 2012 death in Syria. Merging analysis with in-depth interviews of Woodruff and others, Palmer shows what these events say about how post-9/11 conflicts transformed the day-to-day labor of reporting. But they also illuminate how journalists' work became entangled with issues ranging from digitization processes to unprecedented hostility from all sides to the political logic of the War on Terror.
When We Were Ghouls: A Memoir of Ghost Stories by
When Amy E. Wallen's southern, blue-collar, peripatetic family was transferred from Ely, Nevada, to Lagos, Nigeria, she had just turned seven. From Nevada to Nigeria and on to Peru, Bolivia, and Oklahoma, the family wandered the world, living in a state of constant upheaval. When We Were Ghouls follows Wallen's recollections of her family who, like ghosts, came and went and slipped through her fingers, rendering her memories unclear. Were they a family of grave robbers, as her memory of the pillaging of a pre-Incan grave site indicates? Are they, as the author's mother posits, "hideous people?" Or is Wallen's memory out of focus? In this quick-paced and riveting narrative, Wallen exorcizes these haunted memories to clarify the nature of her family and, by extension, her own character. Plumbing the slipperiness of memory and confronting what it means to be a "good" human, When We Were Ghouls links the fear of loss and mortality to childhood ideas of permanence. It is a story about family, surely, but it is also a representation of how a combination of innocence and denial can cause us to neglect our most precious earthly treasures: not just our children but the artifacts of humanity and humanity itself.
I Have a Story to Tell You by
I Have a Story to Tell You is about Eastern European Jewish immigrants living in Montreal, Toronto, and Winnipeg in the early twentieth century. The stories encompass their travels and travails on leaving home and their struggles in the sweatshops and factories of the garment industry in Canada. Basing her work on extensive interviews, Seemah Berson recreates these immigrants' stories about their lives in the Old Country and the hardship of finding work in Canada, and she tells how many of these newcomers ended up in the needle trades. Revealing a fervent sense of socialist ideology acquired in the crucible of the Russian Revolution, the stories tell of the influence of Jewish culture and traditions, of personal-and organized-fights against exploitation, and of struggles to establish unions for better working conditions. This book is a wonderful resource for teachers of Canadian, Jewish, and social history, as well as auto/biography and cultural studies. The simplicity of the language, transcribed from oral reports, makes this work accessible to anyone who enjoys a good story.
Stories of the Soviet Experience: Memoirs, Diaries, Dreams by
Beginning with glasnost in the late 1980s and continuing into the present, scores of personal accounts of life under Soviet rule, written throughout its history, have been published in Russia, marking the end of an epoch. In a major new work on private life and personal writings, Irina Paperno explores this massive outpouring of human documents to uncover common themes, cultural trends, and literary forms. The book argues that, diverse as they are, these narratives?memoirs, diaries, notes, blogs?assert the historical significance of intimate lives shaped by catastrophic political forces, especially the Terror under Stalin and World War II. Moreover, these published personal documents create a community where those who lived through the Soviet era can gain access to the inner recesses of one another's lives. This community strives to forge a link to the tradition of Russia's nineteenth-century intelligentsia; thus the Russian "intelligentsia" emerges as an additional implicit subject of this book. The book surveys hundreds of personal accounts and focuses on two in particular, chosen for their exceptional quality, scope, and emotional power. Notes about Anna Akhmatova is the diary Lidiia Chukovskaia, a professional editor, kept to document the day-to-day life of her friend, the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Evgeniia Kiseleva, a barely literate former peasant, kept records in notebooks with the thought of crafting a movie script from the story of her life. The striking parallels and contrasts between these two documents demonstrate how the Soviet state and the idea of history shaped very different lives and very different life stories. The book also analyzes dreams (most of them terror dreams) recounted in the diaries and memoirs of authors ranging from a peasant to well-known writers, a Party leader, and Stalin himself. History, Paperno shows, invaded their dreams, too. With a sure grasp of Russian cultural history, great sensitivity to the men and women who wrote, and a command of European and American scholarship on life writing, Paperno places diaries and memoirs of the Soviet experience in a rich historical and conceptual frame. An important and lasting contribution to the history of Russian culture at the end of an epoch, Stories of the Soviet Experience also illuminates the general logic and specific uses of personal narratives.
Gumbo for the Soul: Liberating Memoirs and Stories to Inspire Females of Color by
A volume in Contemporary Perspectives on Multicultural Gifted Education Rejection. Loss. Confusion. Pain. Our past and our future are intertwined. Each distinct memory becomes one life. What once hurt, eventually heals, and the lesson (or lessons) to be learned becomes one with our soul and our spirit. Our experiences provide strength instead of destruction. Our great-grandmothers, grandmothers, mothers -- all women of power who came before us -- were great descendants of the coastal lands of West Africa. They arrived in strange lands with their Gumbo - -their memories, rhythms, ingenuity, creativity, strength, and compassion. Their lived stories and conversation were recipes mixed with unique combinations of ingredients, dropped into the cast iron pot -- stirred, dropped in, seasoned, dropped in, stirred again, and again, and again, until done. This Gumbo is savory like the soul, carefully prepared, recipes rich with what our foremothers brought with them from their homeland. They brought the best of what they had to offer. Gumbo or Gombo is a Bantu word meaning 'okra'. Okra is a rich vegetable that serves as the base (or gravy) for a delicately prepared stew. (Today's Gumbo cooks use a 'roux' as the base- see the recipe on page 3). Gumbo's West African origins have been modified over the past two centuries by people of varied ancestry: Native American, German, Spanish, and French (Moss, 2014). It is essential to understand the manner in which Gumbo is prepared: each ingredient must be placed into the stew at its specified time so that it can cook in and savor its own flavor. When completed, Gumbo is usually served over grits or rice. Gumbo has become a cornerstone of life in African-descended communities across the south and southwest spanning from South Carolina to Louisiana and Texas. Gumbo is a treasure... a reminder of the greatness that lived in the village in a time of strength and abundance...a reminder of the resilience and richness of our people over generations. This book -- a collection of memoirs written by Women of Color is shared to inspire and motivate readers. The authors of these precious, soulful stories are from across the globe and represent various backgrounds and professions. What these women have in common, though, is their drive to tell their story. Stories of pain, discovery, strength, and stories of beginnings. Many of the experiences, as difficult as they may have been, made the women who they are today. Telling these stories to a new generation will empower and encourage them in their experiences no matter how troubling or challenging (Harris, 2015). These stories, like our foremothers offering their Gumbo, present the best these women have to offer. These authors want the world to know that deep inside of each of us is a rich, vibrant, purposeful beginning. As our lives develop and we are "stirred and stirred again", like Gumbo, our experiences begin to shape who we are and who we become. When the stirring is complete, a comforting meal -- one that says no matter what has gone into the dish, it's going to be amazingly magnificent!! The authors hope these stories will inspire and motivate girls and Women of Color to trust their experiences -- whether good or bad -- to help them become. Our becoming means that after all that life has thrown our way, we are strong, purposeful, and powerful people who are a great treasure to a world that sometimes rejects and ignores our existence. Embedded in this book are stories of abuse and triumph, sadness and victory, disappointment and resilience, discovery and victory. We are very proud to be the keepers of these rich recipes. They represent the first in what we hope will become a collection or series of inspirational memoirs that will be shared to help others live out their destiny and become the women they were born to be.
Welcome to Wherever We Are: A Memoir of Family, Caregiving, and Redemption by
How do you go about caregiving for an ill and elderly parent with a lifelong history of abuse and control, intertwined with expressions of intense love and adoration? How do you reconcile the resulting ambivalence, fear, and anger? Welcome to Wherever We Are is a meditation on what we hold onto, what we let go of, how we remember others and ultimately how we're remembered. Deborah Cohan shares her story of caring for her father, a man who was simultaneously loud, gentle, loving and cruel and whose brilliant career as an advertising executive included creating slogans like 'How about a nice Hawaiian punch?' Wrestling with emotional extremes that characterize abusive relationships, Cohan shows how she navigated life with a man who was at once generous and affectionate, creating magical coat pockets filled with chocolate kisses when she was a little girl, yet who was also prone to searing, vicious remarks like 'You'd make my life easier if you'd commit suicide.' In this gripping memoir, Cohan tells her unique personal story while also weaving in her expertise as a sociologist and domestic abuse counselor to address broader questions related to marriage, violence, divorce, only children, intimacy and loss. A story most of us can relate to as we reckon with past and future choices against the backdrop of complicated family dynamics, Welcome to Wherever We Are is about how we might come to live our own lives better amidst unpredictable changes through grief and healing.
Dancing in Blackness: A Memoir by
Dancing in Blackness is a professional dancer's personal journey over four decades, across three continents and 23 countries, and through defining moments in the story of black dance in America. In this memoir, Halifu Osumare reflects on what blackness and dance have meant to her life and international career. Osumare's story begins in 1960s San Francisco amid the Black Arts Movement, black militancy, and hippie counterculture. It was there, she says, that she chose dance as her own revolutionary statement. Osumare describes her experiences as a young black dancer in Europe teaching ""jazz ballet"" and establishing her own dance company in Copenhagen. Moving to New York City, she danced with the Rod Rodgers Dance Company and took part in integrating the programs at the Lincoln Center. After doing dance fieldwork in Ghana, Osumare returned to California and helped develop Oakland's black dance scene. Osumare introduces readers to some of the major artistic movers and shakers she collaborated with throughout her career, including Katherine Dunham, Pearl Primus, Jean-Leon Destine, Alvin Ailey, and Donald McKayle. Now a black studies scholar, Osumare uses her extraordinary experiences to reveal the overlooked ways that dance has been a vital tool in the black struggle for recognition, justice, and self-empowerment. Her memoir is the inspiring story of an accomplished dance artist who has boldly developed and proclaimed her identity as a black woman.
Great Escape from Stalag Luft III: The Memoir of Jens Müller by
Jens Mulller was one of only three men who successfully escaped from Stalag Luft III (now in ?aga? Poland) in March 1944--the break that later became the basis for the famous film The Great Escape. Together with Per Bergsland another Norwegian POW he stowed away on a ship to Gothenburg Sweden. The escapees sought out the British consulate and were flown from Stockholm to Scotland. From there they were sent by train to London and shortly afterwards to 'Little Norway' in Canada. Muller's book about his wartime experiences was first published in Norwegian in 1946 titled Tre kom Tilbake (Three Came Back). This new edition is the first translation into English and will correct the impression--set by the film--that the men who escaped successfully were American and Australian. In a vivid informative memoir he details what life in the camp was like how the escapes were planned and executed and tells the story of his personal breakout and success reaching RAF Leuchars in Scotland.
Homeboy Came to Orange: A Story of People's Power by
The story of a union organizer who found a second career in community organizing and helped a Jim Crow city become a better place. Ernest Thompson dedicated his life to organizing the powerless. This lively, illustrated personal narrative of his work shows the great contribution that people's coalitions can make to the struggle for equality and freedom. Thompson cut his teeth organizing one of the great industrial unions, the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America, and brought his organizing skills and commitment to coalition building to Orange, New Jersey. He built a strong organization and skillfully led fights for school desegregation, black political representation, and strong government in a city he initially thought of as a "dirty Jim Crow town going nowhere." Thompson came to love the City of Orange and its caring citizens, seeing in its struggles a microcosm of America. This story of people's power is meant for all who struggle for human rights, economic opportunity, decent housing, effective education, and a chance for children to have a better life. Ernest Thompson (1906-1971) grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, on a farm that had been given to his family at the end of the Civil War. The family was very poor and oppressed by racist practices. Thompson was determined to get away and to obtain power. He migrated to Jersey City, where he became part of the union organizing movement that built the Congress of Industrial Unions (CIO). He became the first African American to hold a fulltime organizing position with his union, the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). He eventually headed UE's innovative Fair Employment Practices program and fought for equal rights and pay for women and minority workers. Thompson also helped build the National Negro Labor Council, 1951-1956, and served as its director of organizing. In 1956, under the onslaught of the McCarthy era, UE was split in two, and Thompson lost his job. His wife, Margaret Thompson, brought the local school segregation to his attention. Ernie "Home" Thompson organized to desegregate the regional schools, building strong coalitions and political power for the black community that ultimately served all the people of Orange.
Angry Queer Somali Boy: A Complicated Memoir by
A story of a young man's queer coming of age amidst displacement, violence, and alienation Kidnapped by his father on the eve of Somalia's societal implosion, Mohamed Ali was taken first to the Netherlands by his stepmother, and then later on to Canada. Unmoored from his birth family and caught between twin alienating forces of Somali tradition and Western culture, Mohamed must forge his own queer coming of age. What follows in this fierce and unrelenting account is a story of one young man's nascent sexuality fused with the violence wrought by displacement.
Unlike the Heart: A Memoir of Brain and Mind by
Investigating the difference between the brain and the mind, this is a thoughtful, reflective, and intelligent examination of psychology, neuroscience and psychoanalysis that cleverly combines the analytical with the personal. 'Unlike the heart ... a brain cannot be understood as a static organ. It changes with its history and with every present moment.' After the birth of her first child, Nicola Redhouse experiences an unrelenting anxiety that quickly overwhelms her. Her immense love for her child can't protect her from the dread that prevents her leaving the house, opening the mail, eating. Nor, it seems, can the psychoanalytic thinking she has absorbed through her family and her many years of therapy. In an attempt to understand the source of her panic, Nicola starts to thread together what she knows about herself and her family with explorations of the human mind in philosophy, science and literature. What role do genetics play in postnatal anxiety? Do the biological changes of motherhood offer a complete explanation? Is the Freudian idea of the mind outdated? Can more recent combined theories from neuroscientists and psychoanalysts provide the answers? How might we be able to know ourselves through our genes, our biology, our family stories and our own ever-unfolding narratives? In this compelling and insightful memoir, Nicola blends her personal experiences with the historical progression of psychoanalysis. In the end, much like in analysis, it is the careful act of narrative construction that yields the answers.
First Gear: A Motorcycle Memoir by
A powerful story of childhood physical, emotional and sexual abuse unrolls as the author, at age 50 and living with Multiple Sclerosis, rides her 2009 Harley-Davidson -- named Thelma D. -- from Ottawa to Winnipeg and back, with detours to northern Ontario and a detour into Quebec. During her ride through the stunning landscape of the Canadian Shield, she shares stories of her childhood growing up in the 1970s in the Ottawa Valley with her three brothers, a violent father and an alcoholic mother. Told with a frank openness and humour, First Gear is ultimately a story of courage, survival, and recovery.
Starve the Vulture: A Memoir by
"Jaunty, frank, and compelling, Carney shares his instructive story with generosity and insight." --Booklist "Carney will easily win sympathy for his life, in which he has persevered to show others the hard work of his salvation." --Kirkus Reviews "Thanks to Carney's long career as a poet, there are some truly beautiful, enthralling passages that make the book a real page turner." --LitReactor "Carney weaves beautiful imagery into each scene, pulling the reader down the rabbit hole with him. His voice is raw and honest, similar to his poetic voice if you've had the good sense to have listened to him read before. With a deft hand, Carney takes what could be a kaleidoscope of agony, a narrative too hard to absorb, and softens each blow with his gentle prose." --PANK Magazine "It seems impossible to me that a reader could fail to be gripped by Carney's straightforward, vulnerable voice, which is able to imbue the harrowing events of his life with beauty, humor, and deep meaning." --Hippocampus Magazine "A story of tremendous courage and creativity in overcoming." --Poet Victoria "Before he was a sex-addict-crackhead-boozer-porn-salesman sliding downward in the Dallas demimonde, Jason Carney was a poet, a lowlife who prized his thesaurus as much as his speed pipe...He made it out, andStarve the Vulture tells how he did it, how poetic ecstasy trumped sordid pleasure. Brisk, electric, and moving, his story recalls both Baudelaire'sIntimate Journals and Bunyan'sPilgrim's Progress." --J. Michael Lennon, author ofNorman Mailer: A Double Life "While everyone with a pen claims to have been to hell and back, Jason Carney crafts his own harrowing perdition with a singular voice that is brash, unflinching, and eerily poetic." --Patricia Smith, author ofShoulda Been Jimi Savannah "As Jason Carney takes himself from transgression to transcendence, he takes us with him. What starves the vulture will feed the reader." --Daphne Gottlieb, author of15 Ways to Stay Alive The latest from Akashic's Kaylie Jones Books imprint. A lyrical, mesmerizing debut from Jason Carney who overcomes his own racism, homophobia, drug addiction, and harrowing brushes with death to find redemption and unlikely fame on the national performance poetry circuit. Woven into Carney's path to recovery is a powerful family story, depicting the roots of prejudice and dysfunction through several generations.
The Home That Was Our Country by
At the Arab Spring's hopeful start, Alia Malek returned to Damascus to reclaim her grandmother's apartment, which had been lost to her family since Hafez al-Assad came to power in 1970. Its loss was central to her parent's decision to make their lives in America. In chronicling the people who lived in the Tahaan building, past and present, Alia portrays the Syrians-the Muslims, Christians, Jews, Armenians, and Kurds-who worked, loved, and suffered in close quarters, mirroring the political shifts in their country. Restoring her family's home as the country comes apart, she learns how to speak the coded language of oppression that exists in a dictatorship, while privately confronting her own fears about Syria's future. The Home That Was Our Country is a deeply researched, personal journey that shines a delicate but piercing light on Syrian history, society, and politics. Teeming with insights, the narrative weaves acute political analysis with a century of intimate family history, ultimately delivering an unforgettable portrait of the Syria that is being erased.
A Wolf at the Table by
"As a little boy, I had a dream that my father had taken me to the woods where there was a dead body. He buried it and told me I must never tell. It was the only thing we'd ever done together as father and son, and I promised not to tell. But unlike most dreams, the memory of this one never left me. And sometimes...I wasn't altogether sure about one thing: was it just a dream?""" When Augusten Burroughs was small, his father was a shadowy presence in his life: a form on the stairs, a cough from the basement, a silent figure smoking a cigarette in the dark. As Augusten grew older, something sinister within his father began to unfurl. Something dark and secretive that could not be named. Betrayal after shocking betrayal ensued, and Augusten's childhood was over. The kind of father he wanted didn't exist for him. This father was distant, aloof, uninterested... And then the "games" began. With "A Wolf at the Table, " Augusten Burroughs makes a quantum leap into untapped emotional terrain: the radical pendulum swing between love and hate, the unspeakably terrifying relationship between father and son. Told with scorching honesty and penetrating insight, it is a story for anyone who has ever longed for unconditional love from a parent. Though harrowing and brutal, "A Wolf at the Table" will ultimately leave you buoyed with the profound joy of simply being alive. It's a memoir of stunning psychological cruelty and the redemptive power of hope.
The Long Run by
An unlikely marathoner finds her way through grief and into the untold history of women and running. Thirty-year-old Catriona Menzies-Pike defined herself in many ways- voracious reader, pub crawler, feminist, backpacker, and, since her parents' deaths a decade earlier, orphan. "Runner" was nowhere near the list. Yet when she began training for a half marathon on a whim, she found herself an instant convert. Soon she realized that running, "a pace suited to the precarious labor of memory," was helping her to grieve the loss of her parents in ways that she had been, for ten messy years, running away from. As Catriona excavates her own past, she also grows curious about other women drawn to running. What she finds is a history of repression and denial-running was thought to endanger childbearing, and as late as 1967 the organizer of the Boston Marathon tried to drag a woman off the course, telling her to "get the hell out of my race"-but also of incredible courage and achievement. As she brings to life the stories of pioneering athletes and analyzes the figure of the woman runner in pop culture, literature, and myth, she comes to the heart of why she's running, and why any of us do.
The Bright Hour by
***NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER*** Best Books of 2017 Selection by * The Washington Post * O Magazine * NPR * Bitch * Medium * "Stunning...heartrending...this year's When Breath Becomes Air." --Nora Krug, The Washington Post "Beautiful and haunting." --Matt McCarthy, MD, USA TODAY "Deeply affecting...simultaneously heartbreaking and funny." --People (Book of the Week) "Vivid, immediate." --Laura Collins-Hughes, The Boston Globe Starred reviews from * Kirkus Reviews * Publishers Weekly* Library Journal * Most Anticipated Summer Reading Selection by * The Washington Post * Entertainment Weekly * Glamour * The Seattle Times * Vulture * InStyle * Bookpage * Bookriot * Real Simple * The Atlanta Journal-Constitution * An exquisite memoir about how to live--and love--every day with "death in the room," from poet Nina Riggs, mother of two young sons and the direct descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, in the tradition of When Breath Becomes Air. "We are breathless, but we love the days. They are promises. They are the only way to walk from one night to the other." Nina Riggs was just thirty-seven years old when initially diagnosed with breast cancer--one small spot. Within a year, the mother of two sons, ages seven and nine, and married sixteen years to her best friend, received the devastating news that her cancer was terminal. How does one live each day, "unattached to outcome"? How does one approach the moments, big and small, with both love and honesty? Exploring motherhood, marriage, friendship, and memory, even as she wrestles with the legacy of her great-great-great grandfather, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nina Riggs's breathtaking memoir continues the urgent conversation that Paul Kalanithi began in his gorgeous When Breath Becomes Air. She asks, what makes a meaningful life when one has limited time? Brilliantly written, disarmingly funny, and deeply moving, The Bright Hour is about how to love all the days, even the bad ones, and it's about the way literature, especially Emerson, and Nina's other muse, Montaigne, can be a balm and a form of prayer. It's a book about looking death squarely in the face and saying "this is what will be." Especially poignant in these uncertain times, The Bright Hour urges us to live well and not lose sight of what makes us human: love, art, music, words.
The Blog of War by
Matthew Currier Burden foundedwww.blackfive.net, one of the most popular military blogs on the Internet. His blog began as an homage to a friend killed on duty in Iraq and quickly became a source of information about what was really happening in Afghanistan and Iraq. In The Blog of War Burden presents selections from some of the best of the military blogs, the purest account of the many voices of this war. This is the first real-time history of a war, a history written even as the war continues. It offers a glimpse into the full range of military experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq, from the decision to enlist right through to homecoming. There are powerful stories of soldiers in combat, touching reflections on helping local victims of terror and war, pulse-racing accounts of med-evac units and hospitals, and heartbreaking chronicles of spouses who must cope when a loved one has paid the ultimate price. The Blog of War provides an uncensored, intimate, and authentic version of life in the war zone. Dozens of voices come together in a wartime choir that conveys better than any second-hand account possibly can what it is like to serve on the front lines.
Hunger by
New York Times bestseller National Book Critics Circle Award Finalist Lambda Literary Award winner A best book of 2017: Time NPR People Elle The Washington Post The Los Angeles Times The Chicago Tribune Newsday St. Louis Post-Dispatch PopSugar BookRiot Library Journal Booklist Kirkus Reviews Shelf Awareness New York Times bestselling author Roxane Gay has written with intimacy and sensitivity about food and bodies, using her own emotional and psychological struggles as a means of exploring our shared anxieties over pleasure, consumption, appearance, and health. As a woman who describes her own body as "wildly undisciplined," Roxane understands the tension between desire and denial, between self-comfort and self-care. In Hunger, she casts an insightful and critical eye on her childhood, teens, and twenties--including the devastating act of violence that acted as a turning point in her young life--and brings readers into the present and the realities, pains, and joys of her daily life. With the bracing candor, vulnerability, and authority that have made her one of the most admired voices of her generation, Roxane explores what it means to be overweight in a time when the bigger you are, the less you are seen. Hunger is a deeply personal memoir from one of our finest writers, and tells a story that hasn't yet been told but needs to be.
A Comedy and a Tragedy by
In this powerful memoir, former bicycle messenger and acclaimed author of The Immortal Class recounts his difficult journey to literacy. A Comedy & A Tragedy is the story of one young man's effort to teach himself to read. Complex and many-leveled, this book is also a manifesto about the acquisition of intellectual independence. It is a plea for better understanding of the impact of dysfunctional family dynamics in education, and a passionate indictment of a broken school system that lets so-called problem kids slip through the cracks. When Travis Hugh Culley moves with his family to Miami in the spring of 1980, the bright six-year-old hopes things will be easier for him. Instead, he is dubbed "Birdbrain" by his older brother and classified by his new teachers as a discipline problem. Travis fakes his way through tests and homework assignments, mimicking his fellow students and pretending to know how to read. When his music teacher suggests that he audition for an acting program, Travis begins an unlikely path toward literacy. The moment Travis begins to perform, he is confronted by his angry father, who is threatened by the transformation in his son. Unsure of how to make sense of what has happened, Travis grabs a pen and writes his experience down. Suddenly, everything can be seen in a new light. Having written, he begins to understand in a new way the relationship between words and actions. When his parents separate and his grades fall, Travis clings to a journal in which he notes the details of his changing life. Having no place else to turn to process his emotions, Travis lays claim to the project of his own emancipation. This troubled student runs away from home but does not drop out of school. With pen in hand, he commits to an education in the theater and begins to fully realize the power and importance of literacy. Travis discovers that only through the mastery of writing can he determine his place in the world. Eventually, he will become an accomplished author--with a triumphant story to tell. A Comedy & A Tragedy is an important and inspired memoir that will touch the hearts of parents, teachers, students, and anyone who has struggled with traumatic experiences in education. It is a work of love, of friendship, and of confidence in one young scholar's infinite belief in language. Advance praise for A Comedy & A Tragedy "This tale of struggle, survival, and triumph addresses the inner lives of children and the grave responsibility of adults to ensure that their voices are heard. Readers will readily warm to the story of a bright, illiterate boy who is destined to become a lauded writer."--Publishers Weekly "The story of how writing became a means of healing . . . a testimony to the liberating power of art."--Kirkus Reviews "A starkly unusual and unusually compelling story."--Booklist Praise for Travis Hugh Culley's The Immortal Class "An important new critical voice."--Library Journal "A truly stunning book, completely original, a mixture of autobiography and philosophical treatise."--Booklist "An ever-kinetic prose straddling narrative and polemic, with an ear all the while for the small pebbles slipping beneath its feet."--The Seattle Times
Double Double by
"A thoughtful twist on the recovery memoir" (O, The Oprah Magazine) that explains the different ways bestselling author Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, recognized and overcame their addictions, now with two new chapters--one from each author. In this introspective and groundbreaking memoir of addiction, mystery writer Martha Grimes and her son, Ken Grimes, present two different, often intersecting points of view. Chapters alternate between Ken's and Martha's voices and experiences in 12-step program and outpatient clinics. Written with honesty, humor, a little self-deprecation, and a lot of self-evaluation, Double Double is "an honest, moving, and readable account of the drinking life and the struggle for recovery. This brave and engaging memoir is a gift" (Kirkus Reviews).
The Girl's Guide to Homelessness by
Brianna Karp entered the workforce at age ten, supporting her mother and sister throughout her teen years in Southern California. Although her young life was scarred by violence and abuse, Karp stayed focused on her dream of a steady job and a home of her own. By age twenty-two her dream became reality. Karp loved her job as an executive assistant and signed the lease on a tiny cottage near the beach. And then the Great Recession hit. Karp, like millions of others, lost her job. In the six months between the day she was laid off and the day she was forced out onto the street, Karp scrambled for temp work and filed hundreds of job applications, only to find all doors closed. When she inherited a thirty-foot travel trailer after her father's suicide, Karp parked it in a Walmart parking lot and began to blog about her search for work and a way back.
A Braided Card by
The author, former president of the New Jersey Library Association, the American Association of School Librarians, and the American Library Association, discusses her career and shares her opinions on issues in librarianship.
Interrupted Life by
Interrupted Life is a gripping collection of writings by and about imprisoned women in the United States, a country that jails a larger percentage of its population than any other nation in the world. This eye-opening work brings together scores of voices from both inside and outside the prison system including incarcerated and previously incarcerated women, their advocates and allies, abolitionists, academics, and other analysts. In vivid, often highly personal essays, poems, stories, reports, and manifestos, they offer an unprecedented view of the realities of women's experiences as they try to sustain relations with children and family on the outside, struggle for healthcare, fight to define and achieve basic rights, deal with irrational sentencing systems, remake life after prison; and more. Together, these powerful writings are an intense and visceral examination of life behind bars for women, and, taken together, they underscore the failures of imagination and policy that have too often underwritten our current prison system.
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub by
The year is 3149, and a vast paper destroying blight-papyralysis-has obliterated much of the planet's written history. However, these rare memoirs, preserved for centuries in a volcanic rock, record the strange life of a man trapped in a hermetically sealed underground community. Translated by Michael Kandel and Christine Rose.
Fish by
When seventeen-year-old T.J. Parsell held up the local Photo Mat with a toy gun, he was sentenced to four and a half to fifteen years in prison. The first night of his term, four older inmates drugged Parsell and took turns raping him. When they were through, they flipped a coin to decide who would "own" him. Forced to remain silent about his rape by a convict code among inmates (one in which informers are murdered), Parsell's experience that first night haunted him throughout the rest of his sentence. In an effort to silence the guilt and pain of its victims, the issue of prisoner rape is a story that has not been told. For the first time Parsell, one of America's leading spokespeople for prison reform, shares the story of his coming of age behind bars. He gives voice to countless others who have been exposed to an incarceration system that turns a blind eye to the abuse of the prisoners in its charge. Since life behind bars is so often exploited by television and movie re-enactments, the real story has yet to be told. Fish is the first breakout story to do that.
Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher by
The forthright yet unassuming and engagingly honest memoirs of a publisher whose controversial books on domestic and foreign politics made his publishing house a force to be reckoned with.
Black Plume by
The master of the macabre is back. A fictional memoir told in Edgar Allan Poe's own literary style, "Black Plume" recreates in vivid detail Poe's strange marriage to his child-bride, his struggle to make a living, his addiction to alcohol and his agonizing battle against the sensuality of his nature.
Childtimes by
Three generations of African-American women remember their "childtimes" in this lyrical memoir spanning a century of American history. This book preserves the lives and communities of times past for future generations.
Complete with a family tree, photos from the authors' family albums, and drawings by Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator Jerry Pinkney, Eloise Greenfield and Lessie Jones Little's Childtimes beautifully captures the experiences of grandmother, mother, and daughter as they recall moments from their childhood.
Autobiography of an Ex-White Man by
Autobiography of an Ex-White Man is an intensely personal meditation on the nature of America by a White Philosopher who joined a Black Studies Department and found his understanding of the world transformed by the experience. The book begins with an autobiographical narrative of the events leading up to Wolff's transfer from a Philosophy Department to the W. E. B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts, and his experiences in the Department with his new colleagues, all of whom had come to Academia from the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Wolff discovered that the apparently simple act of moving across campus to a new Department in a new building worked a startling change in the way he saw himself, his university, and his country. Reading as widely as possible to bring himself up to speed in his new field of academic responsibility, Wolff realized after a bit that his picture of American history and culture was undergoing an irreversible metamorphosis. America, he realized, has from its inception been a land both of Freedom and of Bondage: Freedom for the few, and then for those who are White; Bondage at first for the many, and then for those who are not White. Slavery is thus not an aberration, an accident, a Peculiar Institution -- it is the essence and core of the American experience. Wolff's optimistic outlook leads him to express the hope that our acknowledging the realities of America's racial history and present will begin to tear down the formidable barrier to change. He sees this refashioning of the American story as a first step toward the crafting of a truly liberatory project. Robert Paul Wolff is Professor of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst and the author of numerous books, including Introductory Philosophy and In Defense of Anarchism.
Becoming Americans: Four Centuries of Immigrant Writing by
Immigration is the essential American story. From London or Lvov, Bombay or Beijing, Dublin or Dusseldorf, people have come to America to remake themselves, their lives, and their identities. Despite political obstacles, popular indifference, or hostility, they put down roots here, and their social, cultural, and entrepreneurial energies helped forge the open and diverse society we live in. The history of American immigration has often been told by those already here. Becoming Americans tells this epic story from the inside, gathering for the first time over 400 years of writing--from seventeenth-century Jamestown to contemporary Brooklyn and Los Angeles--by first-generation immigrants about the immigrant experience. In sum, over eighty writers create a vivid, passionate, and revealing firsthand account of the challenges and aspirations that define our dynamic multicultural society. In nearly 100 selections--poems, stories, novel excerpts, travel pieces, diary entries, memoirs, and letters--Becoming Americans presents the full range of the experience of coming to America: the reasons for departure, the journey itself, the shock and spectacle of first arrival, the passionate ambivalence toward the old country and the old life, and above all the struggle with the complexities of America. Arranged in chronological order by date of arrival, this unprecedented collection presents a history of the United States that is both familiar and surprisingly new, as seen through the fresh eyes and words of newcomers from more than forty different countries.
Aoc by
From the moment Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez beat a ten-term incumbent in the primary election for New York's 14th on June 26, 2018, her journey to the national, if not world, stage, was fast-tracked. Six months later, as the youngest Congresswoman ever elected, AOC became one of a handful of Latina politicians in Washington, D.C. Just thirty, she represents her generation, the millennials, in many groundbreaking ways: proudly working class, Democratic Socialist, of Puerto Rican descent, master of social media, not to mention of the Bronx, feminist--and a great dancer.AOC investigates her symbolic and personal significance for so many, from her willingness to use her imperfect bi-lingualism, to the threat she poses by governing like a man, to the long history of Puerto Rican activism that she joins; to the simple power of dressing Latina in hoops and red lipstick. Contributors span a wide range of voices and ages, from media to the arts and politics; they include Lynda Lopez, Jennine Capo Crucet, Andrea Gonzalez-Ramirez, Patricia Reynoso, Pedro Regalado, Natalia Sylvester, Rebecca Traister, Carmen Rita Wong, Tracey Ross, Erin Aubry Kaplan, Mariana Atencio, Wendy Carrillo, Nathan J. Robinson, Maria Cristina González Noguera, Elizabeth C. Yeampierre, and Maria Cristina "MC" Gonzalez Noguera.
Memoirs of a White Crow Indian by
Thomas H. Leforge was "born an Ohio American" and chose to "die a Crow Indian American." His association with his adopted tribe spanned some of the most eventful years of its history--from the Indian Wars to the reservation period--and as interpreter, agency employee, chief of Crow scouts for the 1876 campaign (he was with Terry at the Little Big Horn), bona fide Crow "wolf," and husband of a Crow woman, he was usually in the midst of the action. His story, first published in 1928, remains a remarkably accurate source of historical and ethnological information on this relatively little known tribe.
Holocaust Memoirs by
Memoirs of a Holocaust survivor; continues his "Shtetl Memoirs". In September 1939, when the Germans were advancing to Warsaw, Schoenfeld and his family left the city and fled to his native Eastern Galicia.
The Woman Warrior by
"'No name woman' originally appeared, in slightly different form, in the January 1975 issue of Viva"--T.p. verso.
Michelle Obama by
An inspiring story of a modern American icon, here is the first comprehensive account of the life and times of Michelle Obama. With disciplined reporting and a storyteller's eye for revealing detail, Peter Slevin follows Michelle to the White House from her working-class childhood on Chicago's largely segregated South Side. He illuminates her tribulations at Princeton University and Harvard Law School during the racially charged 1980s and the dilemmas she faced in Chicago while building a high-powered career, raising a family and helping a young community organizer named Barack Obama become president of the United States. From the lessons she learned in Chicago to the messages she shares as one of the most recognizable women in the world, the story of this First Lady is the story of America. Michelle Obama: A Life is a fresh and compelling view of a woman of unique achievement and purpose.
A Ghost's Memoir by
The story of the ghostwriting of Alfred P. Sloan's best-selling memoir, General Motor's attempts to block the book's publication, and the author's eventual triumph over the corporation. Published in 1964, My Years with General Motors was an immediate best-seller and today is considered one of the few classic books on management. The book is the ghostwritten memoir of Alfred P. Sloan, Jr. (1875-1966), whose business and management strategies enabled General Motors to overtake Ford as the dominant American automobile manufacturer in the 1920s and 1930s. What has been largely unknown until now is that My Years with General Motors was almost not published. Although it was written with the permission of General Motors -- and slated for publication in October 1959 -- at the last minute General Motors tried to suppress the book out of fears that some of the material in it could become evidence in an antitrust action against the company. This book, by John McDonald, Sloan's ghostwriter, tells the behind-the-scenes story of the book's writing, its attempted suppression, and the lawsuit that eventually led to its publication. McDonald's narrative is partly the David-and-Goliath story of a lone journalist taking on the world's then-largest corporation and partly a study of strategy in its own right. McDonald's struggle to publish the book led him to navigate a complicated course among the competing interests of General Motors, Fortune magazine (his employer), and Time, Inc. (Fortune's owner). In many ways this "book about the book" parallels the Sloan book as a tale of successful, brilliantly planned strategy.
Writing the Black Revolutionary Diva by
Kimberly Nichele Brown examines how African American women since the 1970s have found ways to move beyond the "double consciousness" of the colonized text to develop a healthy subjectivity that attempts to disassociate black subjectivity from its connection to white culture. Brown traces the emergence of this new consciousness from its roots in the Black Aesthetic Movement through important milestones such as the anthology The Black Woman and Essence magazine to the writings of Angela Davis, Toni Cade Bambara, and Jayne Cortez.
Eudora Welty: Stories, Essays, and Memoirs (LOA #102) by
In this volume along with its companion, The Library of America presents all of the most significant and best-loved works of Eudora Welty. Of her own work, she wrote: "What I do in writing of any character is to try to enter into the mind, heart, and skin of a human being who is not myself. Whether this happens to be a man or a woman, old or young, with skin black or white, the primary challenge lies in making the jump itself. It is the act of a writer's imagination that I set most high." Stories, Essays and Memoir presents Welty's collected short stories, an astonishing body of work that has made her one of the most respected writers of short fiction. A Curtain of Green and Other Stories (1941), her first book, includes many of her most popular stories, such as "A Worn Path." "Powerhouse," and the farcical "Why I Live at the P.O." The Wide Net and Other Stories (1943), in which historical figures such as Aaron Burr ("First Love") and John James Audubon ("A Still Moment") appear as characters, shows her evolving mastery as a regional chronicler. The Golden Apples (1946) is a series of interrelated stories about the inhabitants of the fictional town of Morgana, Mississippi. It was Welty's favorite among her books, and she described it as "an experience in a writer's own discovery of affinities. In writing, as in life, the connections of all sorts of relationships and kinds lie in wait of discovery, and give out their signals to the Geiger counter of the charged imagination, once it is drawn into the right field." The stories of The Bride of Innisfallen and Other Stories (1955) are set both in the American South and in Europe. Also included are two stories from the 1960s, "Where Is the Voice Coming From?", based on the shooting of Medgar Evers, and "The Demonstrators." A selection of nine literary and personal essays includes evocations of the Jackson, Mississippi, of her youth that is essential to her work ("The Little Store," "A Sweet Devouring") and cogent discussions of literary form ("Writing and Analyzing a Story," "Place in Fiction"). The volume concludes with One Writer's Beginnings (1984), the sensitive memoir of her childhood, which has become one of the most widely read of her books. LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.
The reason I jump : one boy's voice from the silence of autism by
A rare and important insight into the mind of an autistic child, in his own words.
I Dissent by
Get to know celebrated Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg--in the first picture book about her life--as she proves that disagreeing does not make you disagreeable! Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has spent a lifetime disagreeing: disagreeing with inequality, arguing against unfair treatment, and standing up for what's right for people everywhere. This biographical picture book about the Notorious RBG, tells the justice's story through the lens of her many famous dissents, or disagreements.
Whoosh! by
New York Times best-selling author Chris Barton and dynamic illustrator Don Tate reveal the remarkable story behind the invention of the Super Soaker. A childhood favorite and summer staple, the Super Soaker was invented entirely by accident. Trying to create a new cooling system for rockets, inventor Lonnie Johnson instead created the mechanics for an iconic toy. Lonnie Johnson's life began alongside a whole mess of brothers and sisters and grew to include a love for rockets, robots, inventions, and creativity. With persistence and a passion for problem solving, he became an engineer and worked for NASA. But it is his invention of the Super Soaker water gun that has made his most memorable splash with kids and adults.
Schomburg: the Man Who Built a Library by
In luminous paintings and arresting poems, two of children's literature's top African-American scholars track Arturo Schomburg's quest to correct history. Where is our historian to give us our side? Arturo asked. Amid the scholars, poets, authors, and artists of the Harlem Renaissance stood an Afro-Puerto Rican named Arturo Schomburg. This law clerk's life's passion was to collect books, letters, music, and art from Africa and the African diaspora and bring to light the achievements of people of African descent through the ages. When Schomburg's collection became so big it began to overflow his house (and his wife threatened to mutiny), he turned to the New York Public Library, where he created and curated a collection that was the cornerstone of a new Negro Division. A century later, his groundbreaking collection, known as the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, has become a beacon to scholars all over the world.
The Oldest Student: How Mary Walker Learned to Read by
Imagine learning to read at the age of 116! Discover the true story of Mary Walker, the nation's oldest student who did just that, in this picture book from a Caldecott Honor-winning illustrator and a rising star author. In 1848, Mary Walker was born into slavery. At age 15, she was freed, and by age 20, she was married and had her first child. By age 68, she had worked numerous jobs, including cooking, cleaning, babysitting, and selling sandwiches to raise money for her church. At 114, she was the last remaining member of her family. And at 116, she learned to read. From Rita Lorraine Hubbard and rising star Oge More comes the inspirational story of Mary Walker, a woman whose long life spanned from the Civil War to the Civil Rights Movement, and who--with perseverance and dedication--proved that you're never too old to learn.
Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir by
Every person has a story to tell, but few beginners know how to uncover their story's narrative potential. And despite a growing interest among students and creative writers, few guides to the genre of memoirs and creative nonfiction highlight compelling storytelling strategies. Addressing that gap, authors Lynn C. Miller and Lisa Lenard-Cook have provided a compact, accessible guide to memoir writing that shows how an aspiring memoir writer can use storytelling tools and tactics borrowed from fiction to weave personal experiences into the shape of a story. Find Your Story, Write Your Memoir offers an overview of the building blocks of memoir writing. Individual chapters focus on key issues and challenges, such as the balance between the remembering narrator and the experiencing narrator, the capacity to honour the subjective voice, the occasion of telling (why does this narrator tell this story now?), creating an organically functional structure for a particular story, and taking the next steps with a written memoir. Drawing on their combined years of experience teaching memoir writing, authoring works of fiction and nonfiction, and working in autobiographical performance, Miller and Lenard-Cook provide a practical guide whose core philosophy is motivated by a key word: story.
A Field Guide for Immersion Writing by
For centuries writers have used participatory experience as a lens through which to better see the world at large and as a means of exploring the self. Considering various types of participatory writing as different strains of one style-immersion writing-Robin Hemley offers new perspectives and practical advice for writers of this nonfiction genre. _x000D_ Immersion writing can be broken down into the broad categories of travel writing, immersion memoir, and immersion journalism. Using the work of such authors as Barbara Ehrenreich, Hunter S. Thompson, Ted Conover, A. J. Jacobs, Nellie Bly, Julio Cortazar, and James Agee, Hemley examines these three major types of immersion writing and further identifies the subcategories of the quest, the experiment, the investigation, the infiltration, and the reenactment. Included in the book are helpful exercises, models for immersion writing, and a chapter on one of the most fraught subjects for nonfiction writers-the ethics and legalities of writing about other people. _x000D_ A Field Guide for Immersion Writing recalibrates and redefines the way writers approach their relationship to their subjects. Suitable for beginners and advanced writers, the book provides an enlightening, provocative, and often amusing look at the ways in which nonfiction writers engage with the world around them.
Write Better Right Now by
In almost any career, you must know how to write--even if it's not part of your job description. But if you are a reluctant writer, producing even the simplest memo may be a struggle. Write Better Right Now is the springboard to get you ahead in any job, passion project, or situation that requires writing skills. No matter what you are called upon to do--blog posts, speeches, web content, press releases, or more--this step-by-step manual gives you the solid techniques you need to get the task done. Write Better Right Now works because it is: Short--It takes a concise approach, from first thoughts to final edits, and its "mix-and-match" structure means you only have to read the sections you need. Practical--It is loaded with summations, short cuts, tips, cheat sheets, and hands-on exercises. Solution-driven--Knowing where you've gone wrong is half the battle. Write Better Right Now offers you the tools to identify your own problem patterns and choose the quickest and most appropriate fixes. You can improve your writing today. With straightforward guidance, Write Better Right Now is the quick read for productive people who need to create clear and crisp communication--right now.
Expressive Writing by
Expressive writing is life-based writing that focuses on authentic expression of lived experience, with resultant insight, growth and skill-building. For decades, it has been the province of journals, memoirs, poets, and language arts classrooms. Social science research now provides indisputable evidence that expressive writing is also healing. In this remarkable collection, eight leading experts from education, counseling, and community service join to offer compelling guidance from applied practice. You'll discover: -How writing poetry helps primary school children develop emotional intelligence -A model for helping teens at risk write safely about their deepest hurts -How to engage reluctant writers and help them develop vital writing skills -A simple and effective way to build structure, pacing, and containment into life-based writing -How discovering the wellspring of inner speech helps strengthen writing skills -A method to transform expressive writing into insightful problem-solving -Easy strategies to write family stories -Innovative ways to bring literature into the classroom to hone critical thinking skills through reflective practice -Practical, time-tested ways for expressive writing in guidance and counseling -Case studies for all levels of learners: Primary, teens, college-age, and adults Whether you are an educator, a counselor, a facilitator or a writer, you'll find this volume an invaluable and innovative resource for the foundations of practice of expressive writing.
Writing the Personal by
The Teaching Writing series publishes user-friendly writing guides penned by authors with publishing records in their subject matter. Through detailed exercises, exemplars, and a breakdown of the key elements and considerations of personal writing, Faulkner and Squillante provide a lively introduction and guide for writers to the art and craft of personal writing. Their conversational tone about audience, point of view, form, structure, ethics, research, and finding and making time for writing practice is a not-to-miss primer and reference. This book is appropriate for classes focused on poetry, creative nonfiction, ethnography, qualitative research, memoir, narrative inquiThe Teaching Writing series publishes user-friendly writing guides penned by authors with publishing records in their subject matter. Through detailed exercises, exemplars, and a breakdown of the key elements and considerations of personal writing, Faulkner and Squillante provide a lively introduction and guide for writers to the art and craft of personal writing. Their conversational tone about audience, point of view, form, structure, ethics, research, and finding and making time for writing practice is a not-to-miss primer and reference. Writing the Personal invites us all to find our stories and instructs us how to shape them for an audience and for ourselves.
Writing Your Self by
Writing Your Self is a comprehensive resource for anyone who wants to explore personal material in their writing. It examines how many writers use personal subject matter in memoirs, poems, journals and novels. Part One focuses on universal experiences including childhood, identity, adult relationships and loss as well as more specific issues such as displacement and disability, physical and mental illness and abuse. Throughout the book writers, including the authors, give frank, firsthand accounts of their own experiences and how they have tackled writing about them. Part Two begins with a series of techniques for approaching personal material which include practical exercises and examples. It also considers the differences between raw and finished writing and the validity of each and offers ideas for developing work. With its wide range of writers and the exciting possibilities it offers, Writing Your Self is a definitive book for exploring personal literature and life writing.
Telling Stories: The Craft of Narrative and the Writing Life by
A prolific and award-winning writer, Lee Martin has put pen to paper to offer his wisdom, honed during thirty years of teaching the oh-so-elusive art of writing. Telling Stories is intended for anyone interested in thinking more about the elements of storytelling in short stories, novels, and memoirs. Martin clearly delineates helpful and practical techniques for demystifying the writing process and provides tools for perfecting the art of the scene, characterization, detail, point of view, language, and revision--in short, the art of writing. His discussion of the craft in his own life draws from experiences, memories, and stories to provide a more personal perspective on the elements of writing. Martin provides encouragement by sharing what he's learned from his journey through frustrations, challenges, and successes. Most important, Telling Stories emphasizes that you are not alone on this journey and that writers must remain focused on what they love: the process of moving words on the page. By focusing on that purpose, Martin contends, the journey will always take you where you're meant to go.
Writing Musical Theater by
This guide to the modern musical covers the entire process of creating a show, from finding and working out the initial idea, through to the ways in which writers can market a finished show and get it produced. For the interested theatregoer and writers, it is written in a lively and user-friendly style and illustrated with numerous examples.
Utopian and Dystopian Writing for Children and Young Adults by
First Published in 2003. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Writing Effectively in Print and on the Web by
The written word is our primary tool for communication - with colleagues, administrators, stakeholders, and users. Poor use of words can lead to misunderstandings and inefficiencies. Writing effectively will help you be a stronger colleague, manager, and librarian. In this book, you will learn how to: -Define your audience and your primary messages -Simplify your writing so that it is succinct and understandable -Structure your written content so that it is most usable and accessible to your audience -Approach different forms of writing in a way that is most effective to getting your message across -Establish a voice and tone that reflects the identity of your organization and yourself as a professional The book covers writing for both print and Web-based publications and is aimed at all types of libraries.
Creative Writing for Critical Thinking by
This book explores narrative imagination and emotion as resources for learning critical meta-reflection. The author examines the learning trajectories of several students as they engage in learning to think critically through a new approach to creative writing, and details how learning through writing is linked to new discoursal identities which are trialled in the writing process. In doing so, she analyses the processes of expansion and change that result from the negotiations involved in learning through writing. This volume offers a completely new approach to creative writing, including useful practical advice as well as a solid theoretical base. It is sure to appeal to students of creative writing and discourse analysis as well as applied linguistics and language as identity.
Writing Your First Play by
Writing Your First Play provides the beginning playwright with the tools and motivation to tell a story through dramatic form. Based in a series of exercises which gradually grow more complex, the books helps the reader to understand the basic elements of drama, conflict, and action. The exercises help the reader to become increasingly sophisticated in the use of dramatic formats, turning simple ideas into a viable play. Topics include: the role of action in drama; developing action and conflict to reveal character; writing powerful and persuasive dialog; writing from personal experience:pros and cons; how to begin the story and develop the storyline. This new edition is thoroughly updated and contains new examples based on contemporary plays. The author has added additional writing exercises and a new student-written one act play. It also contains a new chapter on how to sell your play once it is written. With examples based on student work, this text both inspires and educates the student and fledgling playwright, providing solid tools and techniques for the craft of writing a drama. Roger A. Hall, a professor of theatre at James Madison University, had taught playwriting for nearly 20 years. Many of his students have gone on to write for theatre, television, and the screen. He has written numerous plays and articles and has acted and directed extensively in the theatre.
The Art of Dramatic Writing by
The Art of Dramatic Writing is a concise guide to all forms of creative writing, from premise to characters to plot.
Writing a Book That Makes a Difference by
How do books considered "classics" get to be known that way? in this book, Philip Gerard analyzes books that made a difference--fiction and non-fiction, classic and contemporary--distilling out the elusive ingredients that make a work memorable, one that changes our minds and our lives. Beginning with the importance of choosing powerful subjects and themes, Gerard encourages writers to explore what is closest to their hearts. He then presents dozens of practical storytelling strategies that engage readers and move them-to tears and laughter, or to action. As in his much-praised Creative Nonfiction, Gerard's instruction is always accessible and a pleasure to read. Anyone who dreams of writing a book that makes a difference will come away with a clear understanding of what it takes to succeed. Philip Gerard is the author of three novels and Creative Nonfiction, and is the co-editor of Writing Creative Nonfiction. His work has appeared in numerous magazines, and his radio essays are heard regularly on National Public Radio's All Things Considered. He is the director of the creative writing program at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.
Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel by
Dramatized sequential illustrations with dialogue--an art form once confined to production of comic strips and comic books--has recently graduated into the popular, fast-growing, and often financially rewarding genre of the graphic novel. Writing and Illustrating the Graphic Novel is an authoritative instruction manual suitable for formal art class or for self teaching on the part of ambitious self-starters. Beginners who have artistic and storytelling aptitudes learn the basics of graphic novel creation, from first conception of a story idea to publication of a professionally produced book. An introductory chapter describes the widely differing graphic novel sub-genres and the appropriate styles for each. They include superhero, gothic tale, adventure/action story, sci-fi, crime story, and literary fiction. A succeeding chapter discusses and shows examples of picture panels, speech bubbles, layout, and characterization of works in progress. Subsequent chapters offer advice on finding inspiration for stories and explanation of the technique of writing for graphic novels. A variety of illustration and layout styles are shown with reference to ways in which each fits a different sub-genre. A final chapter presents practical tips on getting a graphic novel published. More than 400 illustrations take students step-by-step through the process of creating a graphic novel.
Alan Moore's Writing for Comics by
The master of comic book writing shares his thoughts on how to deliver atop-notch script! The main essay was originally written in 1985 and appeared inan obscure British fanzine, right as Moore was reshaping the landscape of moderncomics, and has been tragically lost ever since. Now Avatar brings it back inprint, collected for the first time as one graphic novel, and heavilyillustrated by Jacen Burrows. Moore also provides a brand new essay on how his thoughts on writing havechanged in the two decades since he first wrote it.
The Writing Life by
Celebrated author Ellen Gilchrist has played many roles-writer and speaker, wife and lover, mother and grandmother. But she never tackled the role of teacher. Offered the opportunity to teach creative writing at the University of Arkansas, she took up the challenge and ventured into unknown territory. In the process of teaching more than two hundred students since her first class in 2000, she has found inspiration in their lives and ambitions and in the challenge of conveying to them the lessons she has learned from living and writing. The Writing Life brings together fifty essays and vignettes centered on the transforming magic of literature and the teaching and writing of it. A portion of the collection discusses the delicate balance between an artistic life and family commitments, especially the daily pressures and frequent compromises faced by a young mother. Gilchrist next focuses on the process of writing itself with essays ranging from ""How I Wrote a Book of Short Stories in Three Months"" to ""Why Is Rewriting so Hard?"" Several essays discuss her appreciation of other writers, from Shakespeare to Larry McMurtry, and the lessons she learned from them. Eudora Welty made an indelible impact on Gilchrist's work. When Gilchrist takes on the task of teaching, her essays reveal an enriched understanding of the role writing plays in any life devoted to the craft. Humorous and insightful, she assesses her own abilities as an instructor and confronts the challenge of inspiring students to attain the discipline and courage to pursue the sullen art. Some of these pieces have been previously published in magazines, but most are unpublished and all appear here in book form for the first time. Ellen Gilchrist, Fayetteville, Arkansas, is the author of many novels and collections of essays, short stories, and novellas, including The Cabal and Other Stories, Flights of Angels, The Age of Miracles, The Courts of Love, In the Land of Dreamy Dreams, Victory Over Japan (winner of the National Book Award), Drunk with Love, Ellen Gilchrist: Collected Stories, and I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting with My Daddy.
The Story You Need to Tell by
A practical and inspiring guide to transformational personal storytelling,The Story You Need to Tell is the product of Sandra Marinella's pioneering work with veterans and cancer patients, her years of teaching writing, and her research into its profound healing properties. Riveting true stories illustrate Marinella's methods for understanding, telling, and editing personal stories in ways that foster resilience and renewal. She also shares her own experience of using journaling and expressive writing to navigate challenges including breast cancer and postpartum depression. Each of thetechniques, prompts, and exercises she presents helps us "to unravel the knot inside and to make sense of loss."
On Writing by
"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time or the tools to write."In 1999, Stephen King began to write about his craft -- and his life. By midyear, a widely reported accident jeopardized the survival of both. And in his months of recovery, the link between writing and living became more crucial than ever.Rarely has a book on writing been so clear, so useful, and so revealing. On Writing begins with a mesmerizing account of King's childhood and his uncannily early focus on writing to tell a story. A series of vivid memories from adolescence, college, and the struggling years that led up to his first novel, Carrie, will afford readers a fresh and often very funny perspective on the formation of a writer. King next turns to the basic tools of his trade -- how to sharpen and multiply them through use, and how the writer must always have them close at hand. He takes the reader through crucial aspects of the writer's art and life, offering practical and inspiring advice on everything from plot and character development to work habits and rejection. Serialized in the New Yorker to vivid acclaim, On Writing culminates with a profoundly moving account of how King's overwhelming need to write spurred him toward recovery, and brought him back to his life.Brilliantly structured, friendly and inspiring, On Writing will empower -- and entertain -- everyone who reads it.