The pub date for my new memoir, What They Saved: Pieces of a Jewish Past, is September 1st.  So why am I in a state of high anxiety? It’s not as though I’m a first time author. I’ve been publishing books since 1980, and I’ve just turned seventy. Why do I feel as if I’m going on a…

“There are moments in our lives that make all the difference,…

She Writer Sandra Beasley writes about the publication of her first memoir on Meg Waite Clayton's 1st Books: Stories of How Writers Get Started today

I'm delighted to be hosting Sandra Beasley on 1st Books today. The Boston Globe calls Sandra's…

Amidst Murdoch’s excesses, Sarah Glazer finds restrictions on journalists more worrying

One of the joys of moving to London 5 years ago was my morning perusal of the local newsstand. As I read the…

I wasn’t planning on spending a day and a half turning around an op-ed. But when editors from certain venues call, I jump. Some opportunities are just too good to turn down.

Colleagues—especially, often, academics, and especially, often, fellow writing mamas—sometimes ask me how it’s possible to turn something around with the speed that today’s media requires when you've got so much ELSE, er, going on. So I thought I’d break it down, blow by blow, in an effort to…

“I’ve never told anyone this before,” the email said. It was one of several that landed on my desk at the Committee to Protect Journalists after the news broke that CBS correspondent…

"HAPPY ANNIVERSARY, SHE WRITES!"

Finding material to write about is not always easy.  One route is the memoir, which is built on revealing material you know well. Or you can write about something you don’t know well but would like to learn about. I combine the two by weaving some – but not all – of my own life story with answers to the question “What’s going on with women?” I have spent most of my professional life…

Now available on She Writes Radio, Alexandra Styron, Kathryn Harrison, and guest host Sarah Saffian talking about memoirs, characters who actually exist, and how to tell our stories in a way that is both unique and universal. Listen to the whole show here!

Make sure to check out tomorrow's She Writes radio, This is NOT "Feminine Tosh": Writing…

From my blog:

There is something intoxicating for me about distance that makes it easy to fall in love with. This is not something that is limited to geography, but incorporates emotional relationships, love & crushes. The further something is from me, the easier it is for me to see it, for me to consider its contours & then, make up a story about where it fits in my life.…

There are a lot more "encore" stories than I had thought there would be!

Two weeks ago, I wrote about my own encore story in connection with encouraging others to enter a contest to win a copy of The Big Shift: Navigating the Stage Beyond Midlife by Marc…

SIRI HUSTVEDT is the author of five novels, including…

Marianne Schnall's interviews with powerful women have appeared in Glamour and In Style magazines, on numerous blogs, and on the website she founded fifteen years ago, feminist.com. Schnall's…

Tsuris (noun): trouble, aggravation, or misery



      I’ve just completed a memoir in essays I’m calling, How I Lost My Bellybutton and Other Naked Survival Stories, in which I try to make sense of the ridiculous amount of tsuris I’ve had in my fifty-seven years. As I begin sending it out into a publishing world that’s become quite weird, I’m feeling surprisingly Buddhist. Of course I want to entertain, illuminate, and move others with published work, but…

"I'm organizing an event for the Divorce page based on the popular slideshow on our site, '…

In her latest book The Wisdom of a Broken Heart: An Uncommon Guide to Healing, Insight, and Love, Susan Piver speaks from her own experience of heartbreak, sharing wisdom, stories, insights, exercises, and beginning meditation instruction. Here, Susan answers five questions from Jenna Hollenstein…

In my years as a memoir teacher, editor, and coach, and as a memoirist myself, I’ve found that the greatest challenge for a personal writer is to create work that is meaningful to others. And the most crucial question a personal writer can ask, and keep asking, her material in an effort to meet that challenge is, WHO CARES?

An inspiring, tough-love quote that any serious memoirist should put on a post-it above her…

This podcast features an interview with Susan Piver and…

Journalist Peggy Orenstein, author of the recently released New York Times bestselling Cinderella Ate My Daughter, among many other books, answers five questions from…

Acclaimed literary nonfiction writer Elisabeth Tova Bailey, author of The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating, answers five questions from journalist Paula Kamen, author of Finding Iris Chang:…