Life Story Links: September 23, 2025
“The knowledge we keep in our minds is gone when we pass. There are no second chances, no help desk we can call to recover that data. Why wouldn’t we want to invest in memorializing these important assets to avoid such a catastrophic loss?”
—Clémence Scouten
Vintage postcard depicting a moody illustration of a sailboat on the ocean, postmarked 1906, from the personal ephemera collection of Dawn Roode.
Students & story preservation
LEARN FROM THEM
For photo manager Rachel Arbuckle, helping a school organize and save its physical archive “reminded us of something simple: Preserving history isn’t just about the past; it’s about giving the future a chance to see it.”
PROMISE: KEEPERS OF THEIR STORIES
A program creates direct connections between students in Arkansas and living Holocaust survivors: “When the opportunity arose, they embraced it, understanding they were making a life-long commitment” to share their stories.
CARRYING HIS GRANDFATHER’S STORY FORWARD
“My mission for this trip [to Poland]? To take a family pilgrimage for the first time without Poppi, traveling in his footsteps in full chronological order (versus the fragmented pieces we heard growing up).... I was living and breathing the weight I’ve carried since my childhood.”
On personal history & narrative nonfiction
WORTH IT?
I’m biased—I believe that working with a professional biographer can be one of the most meaningful investments you’ll ever make. Last week, I shared four compelling reasons why.
CHASING GHOSTS
“As historians have long recognized, what ‘actually happened’ in the past is no more significant than what different people at different times believe to have happened.”
GETTING THE STORY, EVEN WITHOUT THE KEY INTERVIEW
“Gay Talese and Edward Sorel, the writer and illustrator of ‘Frank Sinatra Has a Cold,’ on the origins, aftermath, and eventual sanctification of the greatest profile in magazine history.” Read the original piece here.
BEST BEGINNINGS
“How is a writer to craft the perfect beginning? Where and when does a beginning begin?” Beth Kephart with a handful of inspiring beginnings, with accompanying writing prompts to get you going.
A LIVING ARCHIVE
“Because story is not static. Families evolve. New voices emerge. Personal media piles up across phones, drives, and storage. What begins as a treasured project can too easily become a closed chapter—finished, archived, and rarely revisited.” Do you need a legacy media partner?
WE ARE NARRATIVE BEINGS
“Without a story scaffold, facts stay inert.” Documentarian Simon Sticker shares four approaches to help the modern storyteller “satisfy our appetite for meaning without sacrificing truth.”
New & noteworthy memoir
INDIAN NAMES
“Like the meaning of my name, my ancestral tongues are fast slipping from the Land of the Living to that of the dead.” Read a thoughtful (long) piece adapted from the hybrid memoir We Survived the Night by Julian Brave NoiseCa.
NEW MEMOIR FROM CAT STEVENS
“After nearly 35 years of contemplating an autobiography, even abandoning several chapters of a draft written in the early ’90s, [Yusuf] Islam has finished the voluminous, funny and candid Cat on the Road to Findout.”
‘LOOK HOW HUMAN I AM’
“When we think about the moments that change our lives, our minds often go to the big ones: surviving an accident, landing a dream job, or winning the lottery. But what if that’s wrong? What if the smallest, almost forgotten moments were the ones that shape us most?”
Where memories reside
‘EMOTIONAL ANTHROPOLOGY’
“If you’ve ever felt insane levels of attachment to a Bhursa’s take-away cup because it was from that day, or kept a literal pebble from a random road trip because it ‘felt like the moment,’ welcome. You too might be a core memory collector, and trust me, it’s more than just clutter.”
A PERMANENT TRIBUTE
“There is a badassery and resilience to tattoos. A permanence that defies but also commemorates my grief...and the push pull and ache of all of that is now part of my motherless daughter DNA.”
A MIXTAPE OF MEMORIES
“I’d discovered in recent years that songs, albums, and most certainly mixed tapes...were like Proustian madeleines (a sensory memory), transporting my mind like a time machine to a particular moment in my life.” I look forward to this new Substack from Kera Bolonik.
THE STORIED RECIPE
“For Judith, simple Sally Lunn bread—rich, soft, and baked in a Bundt pan—holds her mother’s legacy of hospitality, of showing up, and providing comfort.” Here's Judith, reflecting on her mother and the bread that tells her story (listen below, and find the recipe and photos here) :
Short takes
