Prolific author and Princeton professor Joyce Carol Oates recently appeared on the PBS NewsHour to speak with Jeffrey Brown about her new memoir, The Widow's Story (Ecco), in which she writes about her experience following the death of her husband three years ago. In this clip she discusses what she calls widowhood's "world of absurdity."

In July Random House will publish poet Sandra Beasley's memoir, Don't Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales From an Allergic Life, which describes her experience growing up and coming to terms with a potentially deadly disorder—severe food allergies.

Last week Maxine Hong Kingston, whose memoir, I Love a Broad Margin to My Life, was published in January by Knopf, and Leslie Marmon Silko, author of the memoir The Turquoise Ledge (Viking, 2010), read together at the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y in New York City.

You may want to turn up the volume because this unique clip, the book trailer for Elisabeth Tova Bailey's memoir, The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (Algonquin Books, 2010), delivers exactly what the title promises. The memoir, which was named one of the best books of 2010 by the Huffington Post, follow's the author's observations of a forest snail that has taken up residence on her nightstand during a long illness.

The book trailer for The Memory Palace, Mira Bartók's memoir about growing up with a mother who suffered from schizophrenia, features music and paintings by the author. The Memory Palace will be published next week by Free Press.