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The next chapter in our story
Modern Heirloom Books founder Dawn Roode on her journey from national magazines to bespoke life story books, plus the new signature product lines of books.
My Journey from Magazines to Books
Me, running a business…who knew? For more than two decades I was invigorated and fulfilled by climbing the proverbial ladder in the NYC media world. I loved magazines—the talented and smart journalists with whom I worked, the satisfaction of creating something from scratch every month, the creative process of making words and pictures sing. I learned and thrived and evolved as the industry reinvented itself again and again.
And then rather than reinvent myself within that industry, I took a leap of faith and began to explore using my professional experience in an entirely new way—specifically, helping you tell your stories in bespoke coffee table books.
I had a vision for the company, a high bar of exacting standards I aspired to uphold, and pages and pages of brainstormed ideas. I had a name, and incorporated. I had a dear friend with much more business acumen than me who offered sage advice and encouragement from the sidelines. I had a supportive husband who had faith in me even when I did not. I wanted a partner, but went it alone. And then, I worked.
And, well, I am still working. Hard, and with passion. But now my vision has been refined and reworked based on almost two years of experience, trial-and-error, market research, and invaluable input from clients and a network of professional women with whom I have been fortunate to connect.
I am grateful and blessed, and beyond excited to share the next phase of my business, Modern Heirloom Books.
Refined Vision, New Signature Books
Today I am proud to share with you a new website that highlights Modern Heirloom Books’ three new signature product lines!
By narrowing down the choices for creating a book from scratch, I hope to make the process of thinking about—and starting—your Modern Heirloom Book easier.
Life Story Books
If you are interested in creating an autobiographical book, telling your own stories in your own words, consider our Life Story Books. (There’s even an option to tell a much shorter story in our One-Hour Heirloom.)
Tribute Books
For those wanting to celebrate a family member for a special occasion such as a milestone birthday or anniversary, to honor a loved one after a death, or to tell the stories of ancestors who came before, our Tribute Books are the right choice.
“Dear Daughter...”
And our newest addition: Dear Daughter, on Your Wedding Day, a once-in-a-lifetime gift for your engaged daughter. I interview the parents of the bride-to-be and together we craft an extended letter in an heirloom book that is as stunningly elegant as it is heartfelt, including family photos, cherished memories, and wisdom and dreams for her future. It is, truly, the gift guaranteed to make your daughter cry tears of joy on her wedding day.
What’s Next?
I hope you will take the time to browse the site.
Perhaps you want to read why I think everyone should preserve their memories, or see what makes a Modern Heirloom Book different from other personal history books.
Mostly, though, I hope you will be inspired!
Inspired to share your stories with those you love, whether in an heirloom book when the time is right, or around the dinner table (often!).
Inspired to revisit your memories, and to cherish the experiences that make up your life story.
Inspired to listen to the stories of those you love—with curiosity and love.
A Huge Thank You!
Thank you for inspiring me to keep doing what I do at Modern Heirloom Books, to keep growing and getting better, and to walk through life with an open heart and an insatiable desire to hear—and do justice to—YOUR stories.
7 Reasons to honor your engaged daughter with an heirloom book
Before she walks down the aisle, give her the gift of memories, wisdom & love bound in a luxurious heirloom book—the most unique wedding gift for your daughter.
An heirloom book honoring your daughter’s life before her wedding day is a memorable & meaningful gift she’ll cherish forever.
Your daughter’s marriage is a momentous milestone in her life, and in yours, and the Dear Daughter, on Your Wedding Day heirloom book is a beautiful way to celebrate it.
Here, seven reasons to honor your bride-to-be with this enduring gift.
1. It’s much more than a photo album.
While your heirloom book will likely be filled with photos of your bride-to-be and those closest to her, it offers much more than an album of photos to flip through. Beyond a beautiful layout, you can expect the book to reflect your family’s values and experiences, with stories told in your own words.
2. It’s a gift she won’t expect.
Your bride-to-be will be showered (literally) with gifts leading up to her big day, but most of them will likely be items from her registry. And while there’s nothing wrong with new dishes and towels (who doesn’t need those?), there’s also something special about presenting her with a gift she’s not expecting—especially when everything else about her wedding has been planned down to the last candlestick.
3. It puts meaning back into the milestone.
An heirloom book allows you and your daughter to take a step back and gain perspective on what you’re truly celebrating. It’s easy to get caught up in the details of planning a wedding—the food, the photographer, the flowers!—and lose sight of the meaning behind it all. By taking time to reflect on everything that’s led your daughter to this point in her life, you’ll be celebrating the woman she’s become and helping her embrace the joy that comes with starting a new chapter.
4. The process is rewarding for you.
Helping to plan your daughter’s wedding can be stressful, and creating an heirloom book may initially seem like one more thing on your to-do list. But you may just find that sorting through her childhood photos and reliving those memories has a calming effect. “The whole process was so cathartic,” says Susan Miller, who created an heirloom book for her daughter. “My husband and I loved looking back on Lauren’s childhood. It helped prepare us to watch her take that next step.”
5. It’s the one gift guaranteed to make her cry tears of joy.
The “Dear Daughter” heirloom book is intended to be gifted to your bride-to-be on the morning of her wedding or perhaps the evening before at her rehearsal dinner. Before she walks down the aisle, she’ll take a walk down memory lane with you—and that’s a beautiful thing (cue the happy tears!). As she steps into her new role as wife, she’ll use the wisdom and love you’ve poured into her book as the foundation to guide her on the journey.
6. It’s a way to honor one chapter and make room for the next.
As precious as all of your daughter’s childhood photos, drawings, and cards are, they will likely end up in the back of your closet or garage as time marches on. An heirloom book will help you consolidate these memories and honor them in a meaningful way as you prepare to embrace more cards, drawings, and photos from your daughter’s own children. Plus, the wisdom you provide will be a source of comfort and love for your girl for years to come!
7. It’s a gift she can share with her children and grandchildren.
Talk about a gift that keeps on giving! Long after those dishes and towels have been replaced, your daughter will have her heirloom book to share with her own family. The high-quality materials are meant to stand the test of time, so even after she’s gone, the story of her life told by the people who loved her will be there for generations to come.
“Dear Daughter”
Get started on a “Dear Daughter” heirloom book.
Free Download: How to Put the Meaning Back in the Wedding Planning Process
Know someone who might be interested?
Refer a friend!
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, July 10, 2018
Managing memories post-divorce, during a move & after war; sharing stories for the next generation—and your own reflective journey; plus more memoir-ish links.
“The entire story of mankind has come to us from individual voices from the past.”
—Janice T. Dixon
Students in Negaunee, MI, interviewed members of the community to preserve the history of a local mine for a documentary they produced called A Vanishing Breed: The Men and Memories of the Mather B.
Enterprising Storytellers
NEXT–GEN ORAL HISTORIANS
Kudos to these Michigan high schoolers for their 100 hours of work, their initiative, and their valuing of community story preservation!
OPEN TO POSSIBILITIES
Clinton Haby started his San Antonio–based StoryKeeping business in 2009 with the belief that he wasn’t the only grandchild who loved their grandparents and wanted to retain their stories. “I began with a single digital voice recorder,” he says—and look what he’s doing now!
Personal Histories, Shared & Sorted
BEING HEARD
Last week I wrote about Brandon Stanton’s insights on why people open up during personal interviews—and it’s not the questions.
YOUR NEXT READ?
“There is a deep relationship between finding meaning in one’s own life experiences at times of transition and wanting to share the stories that hold that meaning,” Sarah White, of First Person Productions in Madison, WI, writes in her thoughtful review of the book It’s Never Too Late to Begin Again, by Julia Cameron with Emma Lively.
MEMORIES & MOVING HOUSE
“Being the custodian of your family’s stuff can be a dusty, dispiriting and often overwhelming responsibility, but it is an act of love of sorts,” writes Emma Beddington. “We weigh it all up, make choices and hope we get it right.” Read her musings on sifting through masses of personal history and see how it compares to your own penchant for saving—or purging—mementos and family photos.
Banishing Bad Memories?
LOST IN WAR & SILENCE
“That generation...if they lost a boy in the war, they didn't talk about him,” says Paul Levy, author of the biography Finding Phil, which chronicles the life of his uncle, Phil Levy, who was killed in action in World War II. Too often families bury the past if it was hurtful, but preserving those stories for the next generation is so meaningful—as Levy’s search for history reveals.
THAT WAS ME, THEN
“The person I was then is important for my sons to know about,” actress Mayim Bialik says in this video about how she has dealt, post-divorce, with the physical mementos of her marriage. Bialik keeps her wedding album “lined up with all of the other photo albums and memories that I can’t run from”—and her sons relish seeing photos of their grandparents and family in younger days. There’s food for thought here for anyone wondering what to do with old photos of tougher times.
...and a Few More Links
11 White House memoirs by women that show a different side to the Oval Office
Preserving your digital memories: How smart phones have changed family photography
“Those books made me realize that though history is about big world events and politics, it’s also about the ordinary lives of ordinary people.”
Backpack-sized archiving kit empowers community historians to record local narratives
Short Takes
100-percent listening
Humans of New York creator reveals his insights on why people open up—and it’s not the questions. How being 100 percent present invites honest storytelling.
As both a Tim Ferriss fan and a Humans of New York devotee, I was eager to dive into Tim’s interview with HONY creator Brandon Stanton. The podcast turned the tables on Stanton, making him the subject of probing questions rather than the one holding the mic.
If you are not one of the 25 million followers of Humans of New York, here’s the scoop: Through photographs and enlightening captions (derived from much longer interviews) Stanton provides a glimpse into the lives of strangers on the streets of New York City and around the world. The snippets of conversation he shares alongside the portraits run the gamut from funny and warm to heart-wrenching and soul-satisfying—and they always, somehow, find a deep truth that taps into the universal.
“How Do You Get People to Share?”
Stanton says that the question he is most often asked is how he gets strangers to open up to him. I can understand why; his subjects allow themselves to become incredibly vulnerable during the interview process, revealing private experiences that have included physical abuse, gripping loneliness, falling off the wagon, and all sorts of painful decisions and emotions. He shares some moving accounts during the interview with Ferriss.
The HONY blog and social media accounts can be deceiving, though: It might seem as if the quotes are one-offs, that they were uttered immediately upon the questioner’s asking. The truth, however, is that Stanton often talks to his subject for more than an hour, often twice that. He earns their trust, he listens with curiosity, and he devotes himself fully to their exchange.
And his thoughts on that process—and his ability, after more than 10,000 interviews—to be truly present, are what interested me during this particular podcast.
“Humans of New York really works because the people on the street that I meet are so thankful to have somebody really listen to them,” Stanton says. “In that bubble, in that hour and a half where I’m sitting with a stranger on the street, this magic happens, where they’re willing to let me into a space in their mind or their soul or whatever it is, that they don’t really let other people into. It’s that place that I think connects with so many people.”
It’s not the questions themselves that prompt the sharing of such raw emotions and inner truths (though Stanton does list three of his standbys: What’s your biggest struggle? How has your life turned out differently than you expected it to? What do you feel most guilty about?). Rather, it is the listening, and the follow-up.
“Being heard like that is such a validating thing,” he says, and “that’s why people always share.”
The Power of Presence
“The planned questions are just springboards into a conversation,” Stanton tells Ferriss. “And how you get to that deep place with a person is absolute presence. It’s being 100 percent there.”
“You’re not thinking in the framework of an interview. You’re not looking at your list of questions. You’re not thinking about your next question. You’re not thinking about how this person fits into your idea of them and what you know about them. You’re 100 percent there, and you’re 100 percent listening to them. And your questions are 100 percent based on curiosity and what they are telling you, and nothing else.”
Amen. That’s what a good interview is all about.
Challenge Yourself to Listen
Listening to the stories that you hold dear is the biggest joy and privilege of what I do here at Modern Heirloom Books. I strive to earn your trust, and to listen with full attention and curiosity. It comes naturally for me as a genuinely curious soul, but I admit that what makes it within reach for me, truly, is the time set aside specifically for this purpose: for story sharing, for conversation, and for a true exchange, as Stanton might say, from one soul to another.
Let’s challenge ourselves, though, to partake in such meaningful conversations with someone in our lives unexpectedly. Ask questions, and listen. Give yourself the gift of time for this exchange, and give another the gift of listening—with 100 percent presence, 100 percent attention, 100 percent curiosity.
Who will you “interview”?
I’d love to hear what results!
Bonus Advice from Stanton
I couldn’t resist sharing this one last bit of advice from Stanton, who regards biography as “the best form of history”:
“Pick somebody that you admire and read their biography. If you really want some sort of guidance in your life, pick somebody who has done things that you want to do and that you really admire, and read a nice, fat 800-page biography of their lives. Find out the struggles that they went through, find out the twists and turns of their lives and the decisions they made. I don’t think there’s any better actionable road map, actionable education, than getting down to the granular level of somebody’s life and finding out how they navigated it.”
—Brandon Stanton, Humans of New York, as interviewed by Tim Ferriss
Related Reading
3 places to find unexpected questions that lead to meaningful life story writing
Extended Conversation: Anderson Cooper and his mother Gloria Vanderbilt maintained an email correspondence that delved deep—into the feelings they had previously not spoken about, and into their experiences both shared and wholly individual
This man’s stories were so clearly intriguing—to me, a stranger. Why wouldn’t they be of interest to his own children?
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, June 26, 2018
Icons of interviewing Studs Terkel and Brandon Stanton, unconventional memoirs, Stonewall memorabilia, plus tips on telling the whole truth in your own memoir.
“Here’s the deal. The human soul doesn’t want to be advised or fixed or saved. It simply wants to be witnessed—to be seen, heard, and companioned exactly as it is.” —Parker J. Palmer
A photo of the Christopher Street Liberation Day March from the Rudy Grillo Collection, as submitted to the Stonewall Forever Project. You can help preserve the untold stories of the Stonewall Riots by donating personal photos and letters, too.
Voices of Our Time
THE ART OF CONVERSATION
“I hope the voices in this wonderful archive will help us to better appreciate one another,” Lois Baum says of the Studs Terkel Archive, an audio treasure trove of the late broadcaster’s newly digitized 6,000+ tapes. In his 45 years on WFMT radio, Terkel talked to a wide array of the 20th century’s most interesting people—and now you can explore those interviews for free.
HOW TO LISTEN
Humans of New York’s Brandon Stanton opens up to Tim Ferriss about the power of biography, how being 100 percent present is more important than the questions in an interview, and hanging in there when things get tough.
NYC: SEEKING HISTORICAL MEMORABILIA
Stonewall Forever, a project launched last year after Google granted a Greenwich Village community center $1 million to preserve oral histories of those present during the Stonewall Riots, is collecting photographs, letters, diaries and protest material to be considered for an online collection.
Stories of Our Lives
BEYOND DESCENDANCY
“Birth dates, death dates, immigration records, legal proceedings—none of those capture the measure of a person’s soul,” writes Massachusetts-based Nancy West, who chronicles why genealogy is only the beginning of one’s personal history, and how memoir uncovers heartfelt nuance.
BEHIND THE BOOK
“They have the most incredible story and it has been weighing on my for years that we need to get it written down,” Olive Lowe’s aunt told her. And so it was that Lowe, of Life Stories by Liv in Mesa, Arizona, went on to capture how her aunt helped a family from South Korea immigrate to the United States after their son was born with a severe form of spina bifida.
THE GIFT OF BRAG
Karen Bender, a certified guided autobiography instructor in Virginia, has some advice for budding memoirists: “Tell the truth. Not a watered-down truth or a polite truth, but the full ‘hey Ma, look at me!’ truth.” Worried about seeming less than modest? Let your friends and family do the bragging via quotes from interviews.
DADDY’S DUTCH
“So, the morning passed with a daughter peeking into the academic world of a father who had spent a lifetime learning and now was sharing his special knowledge,” reflects Carol McLaren of Unique Life Stories in Pinon, Arizona. How poring over a rare book in seventeenth century Dutch made a cross-generational connection.
NOTHING IS LOST, INDEED
Clinton Haby of San Antonio–based StoryKeeping says he is enriched by his work through the bonds he forms with those he has the privilege of interviewing—and the resulting production ensures the storyteller’s spark is just a “press play” away.
...and a Few More Links
- Five unconventional memoirs recommended by writer Glen David Gold
- “We Survive by Telling Stories,” by Carolina Hinojosa-Cisneros
- Paul Sullivan died in Vietnam 50 years ago, and his family has kept his memory alive ever since
- Sarah White on handling the income insecurity of the personal historian lifestyle
Short Takes
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, May 15, 2018
Mining letters, journals, and homes for life story material; the latest personal history-themed podcasts; plus family history help & a memoir writing contest.
“But in the end, stories are about one person saying to another: This is the way it feels to me. Can you understand what I’m saying? Does it also feel this way to you?” —Kazuo Ishiguro
On Process and Progress
JUST DO IT
Ignoring an instinct to preserve family stories can be an expensive trade-off. And most of us know this—so we do we wait? Last week on the blog I explored the perils of procrastination.
FROM JOURNAL TO MEMOIR
Patricia Charpentier of Florida-based Writing Your Life discusses the benefits of keeping a Five-Year Journal and how to mine your entries for your memoir.
FAMILY HISTORY RESEARCH
Ever wonder if you could benefit from a professional genealogy consultation? The New York Genealogical & Biographical Society tackles the issue in helpful detail.
THE BLUE BACKPACK
Object writing is a technique of constraining your writing to the concrete and specific, letting a “thing you could drop on your foot” be a firm central point around which the story unfolds, says Sarah White of First Person Productions in Madison, Wisconsin, who offers up this essay as inspiration.
TAKE NOTE
In honor of Mother’s Day, Lisa Lombardi O’Reilly, founder of Your Stories Written in California, dives into some family letters to get to know the women in her family a little better.
WHERE TO BEGIN?
Try creating a place-line, instead of a timeline, to aid with organizing your memoir, suggests Massachusetts–based editor Nancy West: a list of places you’ve called home throughout your life—each “a tangible repository of memories.”
New & Noteworthy
LEGACY MOMENTS
Legacy Republic is among the first developers to be a part of the Google Photos partner program, and will be one of the first to launch the integration with Google Photos to their customers.
THE WALLS BETWEEN US
“Every division—metaphorical or real—is a story,” observes award-winning writer Beth Kephart, who invites writers to submit true, previously unpublished memoiristic stories of between 300 and 3,000 words that speak to or illuminate the place of walls in our personal lives or world.
FUTURE OF HISTORY?
On May 5, The Phi Centre and the MIT Open Documentary Lab presented Update or Die: Future Proofing Emerging Digital Documentary Forms.
Listen Up!
Grab a pair of headphones or plug in during your morning commute for these recent podcast offerings from our colleagues:
- Kansas City–based Amy Woods Butler speaks to Denis Ledoux of the Memoir Network on how to grow business as a memoir professional in episode 15 of The Life Story Coach podcast.
- California–based Peta Roberts’s podcast Storyical, which offers encouragement from ordinary people about how they started recording their life histories, features memoirist Libby Atwater in the latest episode.
WHAT PODCASTS DO YOU LOVE???? I am looking for recommendations for storytelling, family history, documentary, and memoir themed podcasts for an upcoming post—please share in the comments below!
Short Takes
The plague of procrastination
Ignoring your instinct to preserve your family stories can be an expensive trade-off. And most of us know this—so we do we wait? The perils of procrastination.
One of the first things I ever had published was an essay in defense of procrastination. It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but then, as now, I do find a certain allure to “productive procrastination”—that is, I often put things off because an idea is still germinating, and needs time. Many of my creative endeavors are enriched by time spent doing other things; I often sort out editorial structure while exercising, or brainstorm and troubleshoot while running mindless errands. Maybe “procrastination” isn’t really the right word for that, after all.
True procrastination, however—undesired delay—is too often self-defeating.
Recent studies have indicated that procrastination is not simply a matter of poor time management, but that there is a clear emotional element to our tendency to put things off. “You know what you ought to do and you’re not able to bring yourself to do it. It’s that gap between intention and action,” says Timothy Pychyl of Carleton University, in Canada.
Lately I have been faced with a rash of such procrastination among friends and potential clients. I am not talking about leaving a sink full of dishes for tomorrow, but rather a box full of photos and a head full of questions for…well, for “someday.”
It’s one thing to be self-defeating by putting off homework or exercise. It’s another to ignore big things that we know hold tremendous meaning.
From “Must Do” to Forgotten Task
When people learn what I do for a living, their eyes light up, and so often they recite a list of people whose stories they wish to preserve:
“I am visiting with my entire extended family next month and I absolutely should capture their stories.”
“My father is in the hospital with signs of early dementia, but he still has days of clarity. His stories of growing up in Prague are so precious—I must do something to preserve them soon!”
“My son adores sitting with his grandmother listening to her tales of childhood in Brooklyn! I hope he remembers them when he gets older!”
“My dad was in the Secret Service during my entire childhood. He is retired now, and sometimes I overhear him telling incredible stories to his cronies. I wonder if he would share them with me?”
Every one of these statements, while not quoted verbatim, is from actual conversations I have had in the past few months.
And every one of these individuals continues to find ways to put off gathering stories from their loved ones.
Why Wait?
While on a professional level I of course would love for these individuals to hire me to help preserve their stories in an heirloom book, on a personal level it saddens me that their procrastination just may result in a loss of family stories. Photographs will become mysteries for the next generation to solve. Memories will be lost to time. Their undocumented family history will become a genealogical puzzle.
If no one cared about these stories and memories, none of this would matter. But they not only care, they care deeply. I hear it in their voices when they are talking to me; I know it from my own experience.
Ignoring your instinct to preserve your family stories can be an expensive trade-off. And most of us know this. So we do we wait?
Studies show that we are most likely to procrastinate when we are unsure how to proceed—and that is often the case with “big” preservation projects.
Moreover, we tend to jump more quickly on tasks that provide instant gratification—and most of our storytelling efforts take time.
Lastly, when our perceived value of the task is high (how fun, how meaningful?), we are more likely to do it.
I am here to help you figure out how to proceed—so there is no worry (and no excuse!) in saying “yes” to starting today. And what could be of greater value than preserving your stories—your wisdom, your experiences, your adventures—for the next generation?
Knowing those two things, please don’t let the draw of instant gratification keep you from beginning. Some things in life are worth the wait, and preserving your memories, meaningfully and beautifully, is certainly one of them.
As the motivational wizards at Nike say:
Related Reading:
While there are lots of lists of family history questions on the web, here are 3 places to find unexpected questions that lead to meaningful life story writing.
Meet Josh: He plans to write his biography someday. Yet he has told his adult kids none of his life stories. How about you—are you waiting for “someday,” too?
No one will tell your life stories but you. Start small by saving family photos & preserving stories so you create a lasting, meaningful legacy, one step at a time.
Life Story Links: Blog Roundup, May 1, 2018
You want help writing your memoir—who do you search for? Plus, history brought to life through oral testimony, and time travel through old photos & beloved stuff.
“When nothing else subsists from the past...the smell and taste of things remain poised, a long time, like souls...bearing resiliently, on tiny and almost impalpable drops of their essence, the immense edifice of memory.” —Marcel Proust
Buried Treasure
TIME TRAVEL
Plenty of historians have studied the booming time period when New York City’s population fast approached five million, but other than one or two super-centenarians, nobody actually remembers New York in 1911. This immaculately restored film lets us all take a virtual trip there.
REST IN PIECES
Giving up things we've grown attached to can be tough, writes designer Susan Hood of NY–based Remarkable Life Memoirs. How she continues to value those significant possessions after they’re past their prime.
SUMMER OF ’78
Six months ago, a New York parks official came across 2 cardboard boxes that had been sitting around for decades. Inside were 2,924 color slides, pictures made in parks across NYC in the summer of 1978. No one had looked at them for 40 years.
Photo by Paul Hosefros | More photos from the collection will be on view from May 3 through June 14 at the Arsenal Gallery in Central Park, 830 Fifth Avenue, near 64th Street in Manhattan.
Telling Tales
YOUR SINGULAR STORY?
Why write your life story when telling your life stories is likely to be more compelling? Thoughts on memoir, biography, and the power of first-person narrative.
HEALTH BENEFITS, TOO
“Engaging your brain to write your memoirs can leave a recorded history for your descendants as it helps improve your cognitive fitness,” reports Harvard Health Publishing.
THE WORDS WE USE
Personal history, life stories, memoirs—what words are people using when they search online for our services? Kansas City–based Amy Woods Butler thoughtfully explores this important topic.
ECHOES THROUGH GENERATIONS
Family traits, mannerisms, preferences—how often do we say, “You’re just like...”? We take for granted that these connections exist, writes Marjorie Turner Hollman, but keeping the stories going just may ensure those connections remain intact.
AFRICAN AMERICAN LEGACIES
The opening of a lynching memorial in Alabama inspires Clinton Haby of Storykeeping in San Antonio to reflect on the personal biography industry’s role in capturing African-American legacies.
WITNESS TO HISTORY
Patricia Pihl of Real Life Legacies in Mayville, NY, looks back at the 50th anniversary of the Martin Luther King assassination and the benefits of reminiscence through the lens of a very public event.
Dawn Roode’s curated roundup for the week of Sept. 23, 2026, is overflowing with recent reads on memoir, life story writing, and family history preservation.