Memories Matter
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Life Story Links: September 23, 2025
A curated roundup from biographer Dawn Roode with recent stories about memoir (writing and reading), memory-keeping, family history & life story preservation.
“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
Life Story Links: September 9, 2025
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of September 8, 2025, has recent reads of interest to family historians, memoir writers, and life story enthusiasts.
“Interviews are a dance between preparation and improvisation.”
—Simran Sethi
Vintage photograph by an unknown photographer, September 1908: “Wright Aeroplane, Ft. Myer, Virginia,” Orville Wright in plane. Records of the Office of the Chief Signal Officer. Courtesy Picturing the Century Exhibition, National Archives.
Real stories, real people
WAR VETERANS IN THEIR OWN WORDS
“You could ask Chat-GPT ‘tell me about a story on D-Day’ and it might give you something that feels compelling and realistic, but in that case it’s about as realistic as Saving Private Ryan, because it’s an average, a sort of synthesis of lots of different stories.”
ON HER RELATIONSHIP TO WRITING
“I have difficulty with the term memoir. I suppose I’ve been writing about myself forever. But, as I wrote this, and as the structure and tone of the book came together, nonfiction seemed to be the genre that fit it best.”
THE (MANDATED) HEALING STORY ARC
“I am a memoirist and nature writer, and I live with chronic incurable illness. I lived amongst nature when I became most ill, and I still became more ill.” Polly Atkin on Raynor Winn and the longstanding problem autobiographical nature writing has with the way it presents illness.
OUR HUMAN STORIES
“It matters, those years that have fluttered by like leaves from a tree. History matters, personal history, not only the big history that is outlined in books. The history of real people is in their stories. Their memoirs.”
Journaling for good
LENA DUNHAM PEEKS INTO THE PAST
“I have been in the editing phase of a memoir, and reopening the many books I’ve carried in my purse over the years is the best trick I know for connecting honestly to days past. Even the slant of my handwriting (which is terribly changeable) tells me something about who I was trying to be.”
OUR CHANGING STORIES
“The way we experience a moment in time will be different than the story we tell about it afterwards. As time passes, layers of reflection and meaning infiltrate our stories.”
‘PLAYING IN A BOOK’
“I love prying open the word journal until it makes space for all its unruly cousins: the sketchbook, the commonplace book, the half-legible spiralbound, the grocery list where a line about milk accidentally turns into a line about mortality. Because the point isn’t tidy pages or a faithful record of the day—it’s a place of one’s own sanctuary, where the raw material of life can rest, shift, and, when the time is right, come into focus and meaning.”
CREATING SPACE
Suleika Jaouad’s antidote to the loneliness epidemic: Journaling Club. “A gathering that’s equal parts tender and mischievous. A way to meet new people or go deeper with old friends. To write together. To share—or not. To surprise yourself.” Download her free guide here.
Miscellaneous memory-keeping
AS MEMORIES FADE…
Cookbook printed with fading ink aims to mimic dementia patients’ memory loss: “Boom Saloon’s ‘living cookbook’ is designed to ‘trick people into having the conversations they should be having’ about a disease which has become the leading cause of death in the UK.”
REVEALING RARE ACCESS
The thousands of books in Cormac McCarthy’s library, “many of which are annotated with margin comments, promise to reveal far more about this elusive literary giant than the few cagey interviews he gave when he was alive.”
A ‘FIERCE MEMOIR’
Mother Mary Comes to Me, the new memoir by Arundhati Roy, “is not just a turbulent family chronicle. It is full of eccentrics, impish humor, and the absurdities of small-town and big-city life.”
JOHN CHEEVER’S SECRETS
In a new memoir, Susan Cheever searches for the wellspring of her father’s genius. “Her first book about her father fused memoir and biography; this one fuses memoir and literary appreciation.”
...and a few more links
Another entry into the AI memory-keeping sphere: Memento Vitae
Read an excerpt from Miriam Toews’s new memoir, A Truce That Is Not Peace.
“Newspapers.com Case Study: Filling in the Details of My Ancestor’s Story”
At 70, remembering these 7 things means your mind is sharper than most, psychologists say.
Short takes
Life Story Links: August 26, 2025
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of August 26, 2025, is overflowing with great reads about personal history, memoir writing, memory preservation.
“Listening is an act of community.”
—Ursula K. LeGuin
Vintage photograph by an unknown photographer, 1919: “Some of the colored men of the 369th (15th N.Y.) who won the Croix de Guerre for gallantry in action.” Pictured, left to right, front row: Pvt. Ed Williams, Herbert Taylor, Pvt. Leon Fraitor, Pvt. Ralph Hawkins; back row: Sgt. H. D. Prinas, Sgt. Dan Strorms, Pvt. Joe Williams, Pvt. Alfred Hanley, and Cpl. T. W. Taylor. 1998 print. Records of the War Department General and Special Staffs. Courtesy Picturing the Century Exhibition, National Archives.
On writing memoir: process & principles
FOR BEGINNING (OR STUCK?) MEMOIRISTS
Even the most seasoned writer sometimes feels hopeless when they sit down to write and nothing comes. Last week I shared seven memoir resources for when you’re staring down a blank page.
ON NARRATIVE AND OMISSION
“This was a catch-22. [My husband] is an immensely private person. He doesn’t want personal details shared indiscriminately. So how do I both honor his wishes and not erase him? What are the ethics of turning life into art?”
WRITING, TRUTH, AND RISK
“Warning: Memoir writing carries risks of family reactions, anger, and exposure. It also can be freeing and healing. Writers need to have a way of managing these dangers and be free to express their truths.”
‘MEMOIR PLUS’
“The most moving memoirs are the ones in which you see someone transformed.” Nancy Reddy explains how to trace the plot of your own life.
EMBRACING ANALOG RESEARCH METHODS
“My goal in early, generative research is not in focusing on what I want to know, but on wonder and surprise—discovering the very things that I didn’t even know I wanted to know.”
BRAINSTORMING WITH A BOT
“At the frontiers of knowledge, researchers are discovering that A.I. doesn’t just take prompts—it gives them, too, sparking new forms of creativity and collaboration.” On using generative A.I. as an “accelerator for thought.”
Our lives, our words
NORA MCINERNY, LIFELONG JOURNALER
“Now I journal in the same notebook where I write my to-do lists and my schedule... Having all this life in one place feels good to me. It also means I am journaling more frequently, because it’s all right there.”
SHOW ME YOUR DIARY
“I have now lost both of my folks and even the tiniest scrap of their writing feels urgent and sacred as a keepsake. There is an aliveness to it that draws me to the handwritten word. I have the work diary my Mom kept. Her handwriting feels like connective tissue to me.”
A JOURNALING JOURNEY
“I found that every time I wrote, I was criticizing my own writing. Judging it for not being good enough.” Noor Tagouri on what helped her get past this perfectionism and find refuge in journaling.
UPON LOOKING AT A PHOTO OF HER MOTHER…
“Funny, what words can do. Funny, how I leaned into them. Funny, how they speak of me, far more than any photos could or do. Consonants. Vowels. That is where I find myself, the mirror I look in and through.” Beth Kephart on the words that become us.
Personal legacies
SPOTLIGHT ON…
The Wall Street Journal turned their attention to the idea of personal history in a piece titled, “The Rich Order $100,000 Memoirs for Family Only”: “Some just want their heirs to know they worked hard for their money, while others are more forthcoming; ‘My one and only acid trip.’”
LIVING TRIBUTE
“After a period of denial made possible by today’s amazing cancer drugs, I decided I wanted to let people know about this remarkable woman. So here’s a pre-death obit for [my wife], Tracy Joos Johnston,” Jon Carroll writes on Oldster.
ON FATHERS AND SONS
“My legacy is of broken men, each of whom, at one time, had to transform their own legacy and in doing so transform themselves and the inheritance of those to come.” Read a stunning excerpt from bestselling author Michael Thomas’s new memoir, The Broken King.
SACRED STORYTELLING
Video biographer Whitney Myers, who has a background in ministry, memory care, and family documentation, speaks with podcast host Lisa Joworski about the critical importance of knowing someone’s life story when providing care, especially in memory care settings:
Family artifacts & other physical remnants of history
GROWING ALBUM
An artist’s inventive and thought-provoking new work uses her photographs “to create a reimagining of the traditional family album by designing a publication that quite literally allows her to plant her Polish roots on whatever soil she finds herself on.”
A RARE GLIMPSE INTO NYT ARCHIVES
“It’s like showing someone your journal,” one photographer says of contact sheets, those analog editing tools that have fallen by the wayside with the advent of digital photography—but that still hold a nostalgic historic allure.
‘A SOCIAL MEMORY BOX’
“I want to keep these items with me, but I hesitate to pass them on to my children or grandchildren.” Hiroshima museum continues to receive artifacts 80 years after atomic bombing.
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: August 12, 2025
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of August 12, 2025, includes recent stories of interest to personal historians, preservationists, and family history fans.
“We recognize ourselves in the specificity of others’ stories.”
—Tobias Wolff
Vintage photograph by M.A. Crosby: “The Sam McCall family of Wilcox County, Alabama,” 1910; 1998 print from the original glass plate negative. Records of the Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Courtesy Picturing the Century Exhibition, National Archives.
Family story preservation
FROM QUESTIONS TO STORIES
Once you’ve interviewed your family member(s), you’ve got the most important step under your belt. Why not take the next step and turn those spoken stories into something more permanent and engaging: an edited narrative that will hold meaning for generations?
THE ALLURE OF HER GREAT-UNCLE
“I started thinking that if Uncle Ronald were still here, we could go to lunch.... Would he offer advice, or just listen and wince? What would he order? What stories would he tell? I told my family that I wanted to write the story of his life. My real motivation was always the impossible lunch.”
THOSE PHONES IN DRAWERS?
Back-up challenges block tech donations in UK, according to a report: “These forgotten devices collectively store around 11 billion photos, 8.7 billion messages, and nearly 8 billion videos—moments too valuable to lose, yet too often left inaccessible.”
‘MY FATHER, GUITAR GURU TO ROCK GODS’
“When the greatest musicians of the 1970s needed an instrument—or a friend—my dad was there.” I think this is a beautiful example of bringing someone we love to life through our memories and recollections of others in their orbit.
SEARCHING FOR MOM
“[Mariska] Hargitay started by reading letters from her fans who brought up her mother. That led her to combing through storage boxes that hadn’t been touched since 1969.” She likens the process of making her new documentary, My Mom Jayne, to an archeological dig.
Our unfiltered selves
ON THE CHRONOLOGY OF SELFHOOD
“My [journal] entries are just a human being a human. If [after my death] someone close to me read and did something with any excerpts that felt edifying for the soul, I would consider that to be a positive offering for the world. We need to know that we’re not so different.”
TRANSFORMATIVE POWER OF JOURNALING
“‘Alchemy’ feels apt when it comes to keeping a journal. In taking a moment each day to write your thoughts, show up and write your way back to yourself, you take the grist of everyday life and transform it.”
Storytelling out in the wild
MOBILE RECORDING STUDIOS
With the country’s semi quincentennial less than a year away, “America250” is bringing the celebration cross-country with a fleet of Airstream RVs on a nationwide storytelling tour looking to highlight thousands of personal histories.
COMPASSIONATE CARE
Maureen Leier, a registered nurse and digital storyteller, joins host Lisa Joworsky to explore how integrating personal life stories into healthcare transforms the quality of care and creates meaningful connections between caregivers and patients. Listen in:
Through the lens of food
A DELECTABLE MEMOIR
“In the scrumptious Tart, the anonymous London haute-cuisine veteran Slutty Cheff tells all. Deliciously,” writes one reviewer.
EXPLORING FOOD HERITAGE
I wrote about this series earlier in the year, but I just discovered that NatGeo’s No Taste Like Home is available for viewing online. Find full episodes of season one here, and check out the trailer below:
Short takes
Life Story Links: July 29, 2025
Recent recommended reads about memory preservation, life story writing, and memoirs of note round out personal historian Dawn Roode’s curated roundup this week.
“Life is story in motion. Each day, you add to your story, revise it, and view it from a different angle. You erase things. Tear pages out. And sometimes, in hindsight, wish you could put them back. A day is a story. A year is a story. A life is a story. You are a story.”
—Ruta Sepetys
Vintage photograph by Danny Lyon: “Two Latin girls pose in front of a wall of graffiti in Lynch Park in Brooklyn, New York, June 1974”; 1999 print from the original 35mm slide. Records of the Environmental Protection Agency. Courtesy Picturing the Century Exhibition, National Archives.
For generations to come
‘LOVE, GRIEF, LONGING FOR HOME’
A local history buff donates his treasure trove of wartime letters—more than 11,000 in total, spanning the Civil War through Vietnam—to Chapman University’s Center for American War Letters:
THE NITTY-GRITTY OF DIGITAL PRESERVATION
“The reality is harsh: hard drives fail regularly. If you're relying on a single drive for storage, you're essentially gambling” with your family archive. While this piece is written for professional photographers, there is a wealth of information of value to anyone with digital assets worth safeguarding.
EYEWITNESS TO HISTORY
“The sea is a stranger to me,” Ella Sheldon confessed in the first pages of her journal, which goes on to chronicle her voyages on the high seas all over the world between 1892 and 1900. Here is a fascinating look at how one woman's personal handwritten diary can hold gems even 125 years later.
DATA PROTECTION OBLIGATIONS?
“The destroyed records had the potential to be an unknown memory, an identity, a sense of belonging, answers—all deeply personal pieces in the jigsaw of a person’s history—some now lost for eternity.”
Memories, memoir, and mementos
BUT WHERE ARE THE JUICY BITS?
“It’s sad to think that, if the current trend for cutting indexes continues, future memoirs might be accessible only electronically.” How will readers browse for gossip in celebrity memoirs, then?
PROOF OF LIFE; STORY
“There’s a strange intimacy to a stranger’s grocery list; a found scrap of paper is a rare analog window into someone else’s needs. It’s an accidental autobiography, a blank space to be filled with one’s imagination.”
DEBBIE MILLMAN’S JOURNALING PRACTICE
“Some years ago, I reread a journal I kept during my college years, in 1982.... I found myself holding my breath as I realized these weren’t just diary entries or memories. They were evidence of a life. They were my witnesses to living and persevering.”
INFO VS. STORIES
“Take a look at your family tree. Are you seeing people or just data points? If it’s feeling more like a spreadsheet than a collection of human stories, it might be time to dig a little deeper and bring those ancestors back to life.”
Happy and hard—it’s all worth writing about
TRAUMA-FOCUSED WRITING
Writing hard stories is…well, hard. But as Megan Febuary puts forth in her new book, Brave the Page, doing so may also bring healing and wholeness. Last week, I reviewed this worthwhile book.
INHERITANCE
“I was procrastinating while writing a piece that involved research on genealogical websites, and, on a whim, I began punching my grandparents’ names into search bars.” Jessica Winters’s piece is a tour de force of layering past and present and an incredible example of how skilled writing can infuse genealogical research with life.
ON NAVIGATING SUICIDE IN MEMOIR
“Our stories shape us. We can’t escape them. I was no longer the same person after Daniel. I couldn’t run away from him on the page. My book wouldn’t ring true to me without him.”
‘THE OG VIBE SHIFT’
Thematically, this one’s a stretch for our Life Story Links roundup, and yet I couldn’t resist including it for the grammar and word nerds among us: “The Em Dash Responds to the AI Allegations.”
EMBRACING GENRE FLUIDITY
“Like breakfast for dinner, hybrid writing challenges expectations—not for rebellion’s sake, but because it’s practical, and something deeper, stranger, or truer demands it from your material.” On finding the right container for your story.
HOW HISTORY IS (RE)WRITTEN
“The national parks were established to tell the American story, and we shouldn’t just tell all the things that make us look wonderful. We have things in our history that we are not proud of anymore.”
Where memories reside
“‘THAT ANCESTRAL TRAVELING LIFESTYLE…’
“I have noticed that my memory is strangely place-bound: I don’t often remember when something happened but rather where it occurred.” Madeline Potter on letting the Roma narrate their own story.
SEARCHING FOR HOME
Hala Alyan, author of new memoir I'll Tell You When I'm Home, “and her relatives have been displaced from their homes in Gaza, Kuwait, and Lebanon—and she says it's difficult to fully separate herself from these places.” Listen in:
LEGACY, VALUES, AND LOVE
A veteran in the personal history space, video biographer Iris Wagner, speaks about how she got started, what makes a good legacy video (it’s not prescriptive advice!), and why she’s so passionate about her work. Listen in below, or click here to see time stamps of the topics they cover.
...and a few more links
Larry Smith (the “six-word memoir” guy) shares 6 lessons from a return to live storytelling.
“Wishing to Be Remembered, I Remember,” a prose poem by Beth Kephart.
“America’s Cup finally has a coffee table book, and it’s a work of art.”
How Petite Keep “boxes of memories” are faring after Shark Tank investment
5 creative ways to add storytelling elements to your next travel book.
Read an excerpt from the memoir A Beginner’s Guide to Dying by Simon Boas.
Colorado’s Marshall Fire survivors find healing and meaning through oral history project.
Short takes
Life Story Links: February 24, 2026
A curated roundup that spans more than a month of curated personal and family history content (thanks for your patience as we have been updating our website!).
“I have hurriedly re-read the whole of my Journal. I regret the gaps. I feel as though I were still master of the days I have recorded, even though they are past, whereas those not mentioned in the pages are as though they had never been.”
—Eugene Delacroix, The Journal of Eugène Delacroix
Vintage postcard depicting an American railroad scene, “Lightning Express Trains Leaving the Junction,” 1874; published in Viewpoints, a selection from the pictorial collections of the Library of Congress.
Family memories, photos & legacy
A DIGITAL DARK AGE
"There was a period from the early 2000s to 2013 where it was very difficult for people to get organized and photos were lost." On the ‘black hole’ of early 2000s digital family photos.
FROM CAPTURING TO CURATING
“We’re just trying to keep a record of our lives that doesn’t feel like a second job…. So the modern problem isn’t ‘How do I document my life?’ The problem is: How do I stop my documentation from becoming noise?”
‘21ST CENTURY VERSION OF CANVAS BAGS’
“Our digital stuff is so much more fragile than our paper stuff. And we don't really think about it like that.” Thoughts on preserving your (digital) legacy.
‘IT’S ABOUT THE FEELINGS WE CREATE’
“Maybe our families’ legacies aren’t so much about the things we do, but the values those things reveal and the atmosphere they generate.” Catherine Saunders muses on what our kids will remember.
WHAT’S ENCODED IN OUR LEGACIES?
Obituaries are one of the most enduring public records of an individual’s life, and a sweeping new study looked at 38 million of them to learn how we want to be remembered.
Moments in memoir
DEBUT MEMOIR
“In the same way that I knew I needed to hunt, I knew I would narrate this story of walking into the woods alone, with a rifle, in the dark.” “The Memoir Land Author Questionnaire” with Deborah Lee Luskin.
NIGHT WRITING
“Paradoxically, the writing I throw away makes possible my life as a working writer.” Moriah Hampton on how writing through trauma empowers her to live as a “working writer.”
THE POWER OF WRITING TO HEAL
“Three people attended my first memoir class taught in my therapy office, which expanded to dozens per week in several classes each week for over fifteen years.” Linda Joy Myers on the heart and craft of writing a healing memoir.
YOUR NARRATIVE QUESTION IS…?
“I would encourage writers of memoir to figure out early on what your narrative question is. You’re not writing the Wikipedia entry of your life or even a specific episode of your life.” Amen.
Musings on life writing
WRITE AN ASPIRATIONAL EULOGY
“That’s either brilliant or batshit,” Karen Salmansohn’s husband told her when he found her writing her own eulogy. Read about why she undertook the task, and how you can, too.
FROM BETH KEPHART, A SHORT MEDITATION ON MEMORY
“The fear of having lost the years. Of remembering only what I wrote, but did I write rightly? Writing being what you put in and all you leave out; the real word is abandon.”
52 WEEKLY PROMPTS, FREE
Keeping a journaling or family history practice alive through the entire year can feel daunting—until you realize you don’t have to come up with ideas on the spot. To celebrate the start of 2026, I have shared a year’s worth of journaling prompts.
THE HOLOCAUST STORY SHE SAID SHE WOULDN’T WRITE
I included this story in an April roundup, but upon seeing it again in a year-end wrap-up from the Museum of Jewish Heritage, decided to share once more: “What would become of stories like Mr. Lindenblatt’s if the generation of mine that was supposed to inherit them had taken the privilege that came with another generation’s survival and decided not to listen?”
...and a few more links
Short takes
Life Story Links: July 15, 2025
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of July 15, 2025, includes recent stories of interest to personal historians, preservationists, and family history fans.
“Memory is the treasury and guardian of all things.”
—Cicero
Photograph by George W. Ackerman (1884-1962): “Farmer reading his farm paper,” Coryell County, Texas, September 1931. 1998 print from the original negative. Records of the Extension Service. Courtesy Picturing the Century Exhibition, National Archives.
Ways we remember
ON YIZKOR BOOKS
“They would pool their memories, knowledge and financial resources to put together these potluck books.... They were an internal form of monument and memory, keeping a connection to a place they couldn’t go back to.”
WOULD YOU WANT THIS?
“Despite near-consensus that memory has a physical basis, neuroscientists are split on whether we might someday be able to extract memories from a preserved brain or upload them into a computer.”
LETTERS FROM THE PAST
“My parents didn’t think that they would be here 50 years later to retrieve it with us. So it’s pretty special to know that their voices [are] in there that I haven’t heard in a long time.” The ‘world’s largest’ time capsule opened after 50 years.
Presentation matters
SIMPLY TIMELESS
“A book that captures your legacy should be designed with longevity in mind, so it remains engaging and accessible for generations.” Last week I made a case for classic book design.
MULTIMEDIA, GLOBAL STORYTELLING INITIATIVE
“The Last Ones is not a museum. It's not a textbook. It’s a movement—one that meets history where it lives: in the hearts and words of the [Holocaust] survivors who are still here, and in the eyes of the next generation who must carry their memory forward.... The organization has also developed a first-of-its-kind geo-located mobile app. Walk through Warsaw, Paris, or Berlin, and one's phone will light up with the testimony of a survivor who lived on that very street. It's memory, mapped.”
Writing our lives
SHE WROTE THE MEMOIR HER FATHER COULDN’T
“Even in the delirium-addled days before his death, my father continued to urge me to ‘write the book’ about his life.... I understood that he wanted to be honored and remembered, for his life to have had meaning, to leave a lasting trace upon this earth.”
FROM PAGE TO…?
“Rather than destroying them or sealing them up, I think I’d appoint my best friend, Lizzie, to be the arbiter and curator of my journals’ afterlife.” Suleika Jaouad shares her journaling routine.
THE UNEASY WORK OF REMEMBERING
“Remembering and forgetting are not so much actions as forces that everyone must negotiate. One might try to foster conditions for remembrance—take photographs, keep a journal, stash relics—but forgetfulness sets its own obscure terms.”
...and a few more links
Facebook is asking to use Meta AI on photos in your camera roll you haven’t yet shared.
UK-based documentarian aims to preserve priceless memories with Family Legacy Films business.
A nostalgic look back at what it was like waiting for your first roll of film to be developed.
The July 2025 edition of the GAB Gazette from the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies
Read an excerpt from Frontier: A Memoir and a Ghost Story by Erica Stern.
New Haven launches Memory Lab to help community preserve and digitize family history.
Two fabulous visual aids derived from a roundtable about family history and legacy.
Short takes
Life Story Links: July 1, 2025
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of July 1, 2025, includes recent stories of interest to personal historians, preservationists, and family history fans.
“I believe something I was told by my grandmother…. She insisted that the best daubes were cooked in her oldest casseroles, because…only a clay pot can keep the memory of the love the cook put into it when preparing the dish.”
—Potter Philippe Beltrando
Vintage postcard depicting a black-and-white photograph of a family walking along a beachfront, early 1900s, from the personal ephemera collection of Dawn Roode.
Writing about our own lives…
THE MESSY MIDDLE
“You start out with excitement and fervor—blank pages are feverishly filled with stories about your life. But what can you do when your memoir momentum wanes?” Last week I shared three simple strategies for pushing through and regaining focus.
DINNER IS SERVED
“So many family stories begin in the kitchen. So many lives are shaped by what is baked, served, talked about, talked over.” Beth Kephart shares some favorite passages and an iterative writing prompt inspired by the family table.
ON FINDING THEIR VOICES
On a panel at the Festival of Literary Diversity, three memoir writers from different walks of life discussed having difficult conversations in a constructive way, and how telling personal stories creates empathy at large.
…and reading about the lives of others
EXPERIMENTAL MEMOIR
The Möbius Book by Catherine Lacey is actually two books: “One is a novella with a hint of murder mystery. Start from the opposite side, flipping upside down...and you’ll find the other: a memoir of breakup and friendship during the pandemic.”
DESIGNING FOR WOMEN’S REAL LIVES
The New York Historical’s installation “Rationing Fashion: Claire McCardell’s Wartime Innovation”—pockets! hoodies!—(through September 14, 2025) coincides with a new biography of the influential designer.
THREE KIDS, THREE PASTS
How incorporating multiple perspectives to explore shared memory can craft a complex family story: The author of Girls with Long Shadows explores shared memories and divergent recollections.
‘AFRAID OF REVEALING MYSELF’
“Much has been written about us, whispered about us, wondered about us. So I’ll just start at the beginning and let the story unfold.” If you hit a paywall for this excerpt from Barry Diller’s new memoir, listen in here as he speaks about why he chose to finally write about his life:
Ensuring our stories are not lost to time
OUR FRAGILE DIGITAL MEMORY
“It is becoming more understood that archives, archiving, and preservation are a choice, a duty, and not something that just happens like the tides.” We’re making more data than ever. What can—and should—we save for future generations?
PRESERVING PERSONAL HISTORIES
“The American LGBTQ+ Museum met with queer elders, there was one concern that was expressed again and again: that their lives—and their stories—would be forgotten”—and the Queer Legacies Project was born.
HER LIFE STORY IS A JOURNEY THROUGH HISTORY
During an interview, this 109-year-old Holocaust survivor described her escape from Vilna during the war; when she was forced to separate from her son “she wrote him a letter and stuffed it in his baby bottle in case she didn’t survive.”
In pictures
MORE PHOTOS ≠ STRONGER MEMORIES
“Our memory is not faithful. It’s tied up with who you are and your story making throughout your life. It’s your autobiography.” Taking thousands of pictures on our phones means never losing a moment—but it’s also complicating how our minds shape our memories.
LONGHAND & LOVELY
I have long been a fan of sketchbook artist Samantha Dion Baker, and in this handwritten post she reveals that her new book, Draw Your Adventures, has a special section all about sharing memories by mail while you travel—I can’t wait!
THE FUTURE OF FAMILY MEMORY
“The extinction of the photo album represents more than nostalgia for outdated technology—it reflects genuine concerns about how technological change affects fundamental human needs for meaning-making, family bonding, and historical continuity.”
Miscellaneous
HOW TO WRITE—AND NOT WRITE—HISTORY
“Philosophers and theorists think, read, talk, and write about ideas. Historians unearth and reconstruct the past. They get their hands dirty going through archives.” On Alasdair MacIntyre’s ideas about objectivity and the writing of history.
A HEALTHY DOSE OF NARRATIVE MEDICINE
“In concept, Airway is like the Moth—ordinary people telling everyday stories—but with all the vérité drama of HBO Max’s scripted E.R. show ‘The Pitt.’”
PEERING BACK
“I have my diaries of that time; I recorded every day of my life during that year of travel. I can go back to them of course, but sometimes I like to test my memory”: a wonderfully thoughtful piece from Rachael Cerrotti on personal history, love, life, the weight of the world, and the importance of play.
BEYOND FOUNDER STORIES
StoryKeep founder Jamie Yuenger was a recent guest on the Talking Billions podcast, delving into why wealthy families need to explore their stories and the idea of legacy as emotional infrastructure—listen in:
...and a few more links
Scientists are working on a new way to shrink photo files so they can be saved inside DNA.
One AI copyright lawsuit: Training AI tools on copyrighted works is deemed “fair use.”
Claire Foy dives into personal history on Who Do You Think You Are?
Thousands of newly digitized images show Oregon life in the 1900s.
New podcast shares British veterans’ stories from Berlin Airlift mission.
Universal Publishing CEO Jody Gerson joins board of Ancestry.
Heritage project preserves personal histories of Irish women.
Short takes