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“Reading really saved my life in a way that people probably will never be able to understand.” Anthony Ray Hinton, author of the memoir, The Sun Does Shine: How I Found Life and Freedom on Death Row (St. Martin’s Press, 2018), speaks about starting the only known book club on death row and the power of reading.
“I found this liberation from the limitation…” In this Asia Society video, Xiaolu Guo explains why writing in English, her second language, is so freeing. Guo is the winner of the 2017 National Book Critics Circle Award in autobiography for her memoir, Nine Continents: A Memoir In and Out of China (Grove Press, 2017).
“Our lives don’t happen chronologically in memory, and a good memoirist has to know how to structure that memoir in a way that you can see the shaping of a life....” Amy Tan, whose second memoir, Where the Past Begins: A Writer’s Memoir (Ecco, 2017), is featured in Page One of the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, talks about the genre and about Mary Karr’s memoir writing.
“My parents raised me in a white-sided saltbox house, the sort children draw in crayon. Years before we lived there, it had been cut in half and moved across town. We never learned why.” Jeannie Vanasco, who is featured in “The Unknown Yet Inevitable: Debut Literary Nonfiction of 2017” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine, reads from her debut memoir, The Glass Eye (Tin House Books, 2017), at the University of Chicago.
“As an English language writer, I’m not often asked to stretch culturally...” Eileen Myles talks about writing and nationalism, and the importance of international events like the Festival Neue Literatur. Myles’s debut memoir, Afterglow (a dog memoir) (Grove Press, 2017), is featured in Page One in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Mike Scalise reads from his debut memoir, The Brand New Catastrophe (Sarabande Books, 2017), at the Sunday Salon series in New York City. Scalise is featured in “The Unknown Yet Inevitable: Debut Literary Nonfiction of 2017” in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
“It’s okay to be in flux and figure it out, and take your time to figure it out.” Follow iO Tillett Wright through the streets of New York City to Joshua Tree in California leading up to the launch of his debut memoir, Darling Days (Ecco, 2016).
The Glass Castle (Scribner, 2005), the best-selling debut memoir by Jeannette Walls about her childhood in a nomadic family dealing with dysfunction and poverty, has been adapted into a feature film. Directed by Destin Daniel Cretton, the film stars Woody Harrelson, Brie Larson, and Naomi Watts.
“What is a connection made up of when two people have incredible inequality between them?” Michelle Kuo speaks about her debut memoir, Reading With Patrick: A Teacher, a Student, and a Life-Changing Friendship (Random House, 2017), which is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
Roxane Gay reads part of “The Illusion of Safety/The Safety of Illusion” from her essay collection, Bad Feminist (Harper Perennial, 2014). Her debut memoir, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body (Harper, 2017), is featured in Page One in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine.
