Theater video tags: memoir

Deborah Taffa on Nonfiction Personas

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In this interactive Narrative 4 writing workshop, Deborah Taffa, author of Whiskey Tender (Harper, 2024), leads participants through practical exercises on self-discovery, shares exemplary work, and discusses how a memoir can answer the question: “Who am I?” Taffa says: “We’re telling people what we’ve learned in the time that has transpired between when we were that character on the page and who we are now.”

Rebe Huntman

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In this Left Bank Books event, Rebe Huntman talks about her journey to Cuba following her mother’s passing, which inspired her debut memoir, My Mother in Havana: A Memoir of Magic & Miracle (Monkfish Book Publishing Company, 2025). For more from Huntman, read her installation of our Ten Questions series.

A Conversation With Omar El Akkad

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For this Conduit Club event hosted by Max Porter in London, Egyptian Canadian novelist and journalist Omar El Akkad discusses his debut memoir, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This (Knopf, 2025), and reflects on the “derangement of language” while reporting the War on Terror and the threats faced by journalists in Gaza today.

Sarah Chihaya: Bibliophobia

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In this episode of Poured Over: The Barnes & Noble Podcast hosted by Miwa Messer, book critic and editor Sarah Chihaya talks about her debut memoir, Bibliophobia (Random House, 2025), and the concept of “life ruiner” books that “not only make you want to keep reading, but make you read the world around you differently.”

Lee Hawkins

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“This book is not about blame, it’s about understanding.” In this Enoch Pratt Free Library event in Baltimore, Lee Hawkins speaks about the history and research he encountered in the writing process of his debut memoir, I Am Nobody’s Slave: How Uncovering My Family’s History Set Me Free (Amistad, 2025). Hawkins’s memoir is featured in Page One in the January/February issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.

Glory Edim: Gather Me

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“Everything that I was able to write and put into this book was very liberating.” For this LIVE From NYPL event, Glory Edim talks about her decision to write Gather Me: A Memoir in Praise of the Books That Saved Me (Ballantine Books, 2024) and the underrepresentation of Black women in the memoir genre, as well as the complexities of memory in a conversation with Aminatou Sow.

Tracy O’Neill and Padma Viswanathan on Genre-Bending Memoirs

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In this Center for Fiction event, Padma Viswanathan, author of Like Every Form of Love: A Memoir of Friendship and True Crime (7.13 Books, 2024), and Tracy O’Neill, author of Woman of Interest (HarperOne, 2024), discuss their memoirs and how they broke genre conventions to craft their stories.

Carvell Wallace on Another Word for Love

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In this Magers & Quinn Booksellers event in Minneapolis, Carvell Wallace reads from his debut memoir, Another Word for Love (MCD, 2024), and talks about finding strength in his communities and ancestors, and the transformative power of memory in a conversation with Junauda Petrus.

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