Life Story Links: September 8, 2026
“The average life of a Tweet, for example, is fifteen minutes. A Facebook post’s average life is five hours. After that, the chance of being read plummets. But leaving behind actual writing for the people who love you to find? That’s something rare and precious, and it’s worth even more if you’re perfectly truthful.”
—Rachael Herron, Fast-Draft Your Memoir
Vintage postcard depicting Yankee Stadium in New York City, circa 1924, from the personal ephemera collection of Dawn Roode.
The art & adventure of life writing
BIG STORIES, SMALL CONTAINERS
“The flash essay—flash nonfiction typically under 1,000 words—is not a lesser form of personal writing. It is the personal essay distilled.”
‘AN INTERVIEW IS A LIVING DOCUMENT’
Last week I shared three ways to transform oral history interviews into lasting keepsakes—from edited transcripts to personal podcasts and narrative family histories.
WELCOME THE TEARS
“As time passed, I was afraid that my memories and detailed accounts would get less vibrant as life and its challenges and complexities took its toll.” On the complex journey of storytelling and grief.
A TRANSFORMATIVE JOURNEY
“The craft of storytelling will carry you, protect you, as there are many ways to write about trauma, and you will need to learn them so you can skillfully choose how you present your story to readers and touch them with your story.”
DOLLY PARTON, WRITER
“The song wasn’t about me, wasn’t about my life, about my people. But good writing doesn’t have to imagine everyone. It only has to imagine the truest thing about all of us, that exists in each of us.”
Family history finds
BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF EARLY NYERS
Explore this compilation of completed biographical sketches for the NYG&B's New Netherland Settlers project, which developed detailed, peer-reviewed sketches of all the people residing in New Netherland prior to 1664.
STORIES FROM MEMORY
“The past is not so much foreign as free, free to anyone who is willing to do the work, to enter the past with a spirit of curiosity and a willingness to conjure a living world out of the detritus that history leaves behind.”
Ghostwriters, unite
ON VOICE, ETHICS, AND PUBLISHING
“We get to know each other on a very deep level…. I’m so selective with who I work with as a ghostwriter because essentially I am stepping into their shoes. I love working with people who have open hearts and they’re compassionate.” Here, ghostwriter Amy White in conversation about the craft of writing other people’s stories—and about her own memoir:
‘AS TOLD TO’ PODCAST
“We ain’t doin’ none of this Tuesdays with Morrie shit,” baseball great Dave Parker once told his collaborator Dave Jordan, as they worked together on the soon-to-be-Hall-of-Famer’s memoir. “We goin’ out poetic and wild.” Listen in as the ghostwriter talks about their collab:
More in memoir
SECRETS: A REPORTING MEMOIR
A book I’ve pre-ordered: From two-time Pulitzer Prize–winning investigative journalist Bob Woodword comes the definitive memoir of the man with more #1 bestsellers than any journalist of our time, offering an unprecedented inside look at some of the most newsworthy stories ever.
IN CONVERSATION WITH EARL SWIFT
"I’m happy that I turned to memoir only after writing nine books and a mountain of stories about other people. I’d recommend that approach as it trains you to recognize the elements of a good tale..."
Visual storytelling
OUR STORIES, OUR NEIGHBORS
“"The whole point of the project was to ignite cross-generational social connections." A British photographer invites untold stories from a single village.
DIGITAL AMNESIA
“Snapping a photo or a screenshot to remember something? According to recent cognitive research from Binghamton University’s Psychology Department, the practice may make you more likely to forget.”
BEFORE IT ALL CHANGES
“People forget certain things, like where the coffee pot was, how she touched something, the weird doorknob. That’s the stuff that’s unique to your life. I’m preserving all that.”
PORTRAITS YIELD STORIES
“Cormac asks what we think of the home so far, already knowing our answers.” Photographer Beowulf Sheehan remembers capturing Cormac McCarthy through a lens.
In letters
‘MOST REVEALING OF ALL DOCUMENTS’
The story behind Too LA: Letters Never Sent (But Some Were), the new book bringing together Eve Babitz’s most uncensored and never-read writing, as shared by the writer’s biographer.
LIFE ON THE PAGE
“A letter—especially a handwritten one—feels dangerously permanent. It asks us to choose what deserves to outlive us.”
‘LAUGH? I THOUGHT I’D DIE!!’
Novelist Richard Yates has a reputation for bleakness. But while the works for which he is best known do feature a cast of unhappy souls, they are also often funny. So are his letters, which have never before been published.
Jewish research & genealogy resources
THE JEWISH JOINT, NEW RECORDS
JDC Archives has expanded access to primary source material documenting JDC’s work during the Holocaust era and its aftermath. Known within the Archives as the “Hidden Collection,” these records were held in offsite storage for many years and only recently retrieved for processing, preservation, and digitization.
JEWISH HERITAGE NETWORK
JDC Archives has also launched a new names database with enhanced features for tracing family journeys. An ongoing project for nearly 20 years, the JDC Archives Names Database provides access to information about more than 700,000 individuals who received assistance from JDC, not only financially but also as recipients of material relief, rescue, and emigration assistance.
...and a few more links
Did you know Talas creates custom-sized archival storage boxes?
How Dolly Parton told her life story through six iconic songs
Caregiver helps woman with dementia write memoir before her 95th birthday
“More than just relics, mix tapes are portals to specific moments.”
Describing one privately published memoir to hopefully inspire others
This immigrant memoir intertwines personal and national history.
Read an excerpt from The First Ghetto: Venice and the Origins of Modern Antisemitism
Short takes
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of August 11, 2026, includes recent stories on memory-keeping, personal history interviews, and deciphering a life.