Life Story Links: March 24, 2026
“Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember.”
—Klaus Mann
Vintage illustration of a little girl and her dog, published by J & P. Coats, Best Six Cord, 200 yds, 50 (1870–1900); original public domain image from Digital Commonwealth.
The origins of story
SAY MORE WITH LESS
“Blank pages and open-ended prompts like What’s your story? can be terrifying. Six words is both a prompt to break through the terror of the blank page and a tool to wrestle big ideas down to their essence.” Larry Smith on “Six Words Through the Ages.”
HOW TO SHAPE YOUR LEGACY
“Have you ever thought that your most valuable assets are intangible? Your legacy is more than the financial security you leave behind—it’s your life’s story.”
PIECES OF A BROADER STORY
“That’s the real power of local history. A photograph sparks a memory. A memory becomes a story. And a story helps a community remember who it is.” Plus, a little bit about the Frozen in Glass initiative in northeast Missouri that the first article is commenting on.
‘BERYL’S LAST YEAR’
“She took me back to Liverpool, the city of her birth, and we got lost trying to track down the ghosts of the past. She let me film her at her most vulnerable.” Filmmaker Charlie Russell on keeping his grandmother’s story alive for a new generation.
THE SEED: A SINGLE THROUGH LINE
“Once I started hearing back from readers about how something I’d written made them feel seen or helped them in some way, I was hooked. Memoir became my ministry."
Lives in print
ONE WRITER PORTRAYING ANOTHER
“I was encountering her as an important and influential American artist, one who generously granted me interviews and who had saved over a hundred boxes of her papers and correspondence, a biographer’s dream.” Judy Blume’s biographer interviews…himself.
JUDY BLUME: A LIFE AND THE PROBLEM OF BIOGRAPHY
“If a writer’s novels present the parts of her that she is willing to show, a biographer’s job is to recover what has been swept out of sight: those vivid, occasionally unsettling details that isolate and define her, and that risk placing her beyond the pale.”
LYRICIST TURNS MEMOIRIST
“The process started with 2 Chainz collecting stories from his life, sharing them with his co-writer, Derrick Harriell, and finding the common themes of trauma or celebration.”
Narrative in the age of AI
CONSENT, IDENTITY, AND MEMORY
“A recent patent granted to Meta Platforms proposes AI systems capable of keeping the accounts of deceased users active on social media, generating posts and responses that mimic their tone, humor and online behavior”—raising new ethical and emotional questions.
THE REAL DEAL, RIGHT NOW
“Two camps are forming among credentialed genealogists, and the split was visible in every conversation I had over three days.” A professional genealogist reflects on the use—and undeniable growth—of AI within the family history industry after attending RootsTech 2026.
Short takes
