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“When was your first kiss?” & other fun questions to ask Mom and Dad
There are plenty of lists of generic family history questions around—but what about fun ones? Settle in for an entertaining interview with the parents!
The days are passed when you might cringe with embarrassment imagining your parents’ first kiss (at least, I hope they have!). But have you ever asked them about it?
How about their most embarrassing moments? The time they were really and truly naughty? The lie they told you when you were a kid?
One of the consistent reactions I get when life story books are presented to families is this: “I never knew this side of my mom” or “I always thought of Dad simply as Dad—how wonderful to discover him as a person!”
So many questions I ask my personal history clients revolve around transitional times in their lives: decisions that impacted the course of their life, and lessons learned on the path to becoming who they are now. But life isn’t just about the milestones; it’s about the everyday moments and experiences that add up to a life.
And you know what? A lot of those moments are funny—and fun. Why not explore them in conversation with your parents? You’ll enjoy yourselves even while you get to know them on a whole new level! (Bonus points: Hit “record” on your smart phone or a digital recorder to ensure their stories are captured for posterity.)
38 questions to explore your parents’ fun sides
Don’t just ask this questions that appeal to you: Invite stories. Ask follow-up questions. Listen with interest, and no doubt questions even better than the ones below will come to mind as your parents are sharing. Most of all—have fun!
Questions to Get You—and Your Parents—Smiling
What is the funniest fashion fad you gave into during your teen years? In your twenties?
Tell me about a time you laughed inappropriately.
What is the funniest thing you recall Grandma/Grandpa ever doing?
What are some funny things your kids said or did when they were little?
When was your first kiss? Tell me the story.
What’s the most embarrassing thing that has ever happened to you?
What are you hoping I don’t ask? Come on…
Tell me about a time you were unabashedly naughty.
What’s the most satisfying thing you ever got away with?
Did you ever tell us kids white lies when we were young?
What is the funniest practical joke you ever played on someone?
Do you remember a favorite lullaby or bedtime story from your childhood?
Tell me about any pets you have had—and maybe a time or two they made you truly happy.
Do you have any goofy tendencies or unique habits?
If someone gifted you $5 as a kid, what would you immediately want to buy?
Seemingly Benign Questions that May Yield Surprisingly Deep Answers
What is the worst date you were ever on?
How would you describe your sense of humor?
What has been your grandest adventure?
What always makes you laugh?
What is the most incredible dream you have ever had?
Who from your childhood would you characterize as reliably funny?
What is the nicest thing you have ever done for someone?
What is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?
What is the biggest surprise you have ever gotten?
Questions their Spouse May Prefer to Answer on their Behalf
Tell me a funny story about a time Mom/Dad got a little tipsy.
Have you ever had to rescue Mom/Dad from an embarrassing guffaw?
What did you do for fun on your dates together (allow both to reply—often the interplay of their reminiscing together will be as fun as their answers!)
What scenes would be on your spouse’s blooper reel?
Quickfire Round: Questions that Reveal Fun Details
Did you have nickname(s) as a child?
Can you remember any knock-knock jokes or funny riddles?
What was your favorite cartoon character as a child?
What is your favorite… card game?
… ice cream flavor?
… musical group?
… movie?
… place to visit?
… candy bar?
Make a goofy face, won’t you? (Get your camera ready!)
Get your free guide of Essential Family History questions
All the questions (not just the funny ones!) to ask your parents to capture their stories, presented in a beautiful printable guide
I'’d be honored to hear your stories.
Do you prefer to have a professional personal historian conduct interviews with you or your loved ones? That’s what I’m here for! Schedule a free 30-minute consultation to see how we can work together—I can’t wait to hear all about you!
Life Story Links: January 19, 2021
Timely reads on new memoirs and biographies, tips for fine-tuning your life story writing & curating your family photo archive, plus more links to bookmark now.
“I could tell this story with myself as the villain or the hero, innocent bystander or agent provocateur, and each time I’d be telling a form of the ‘truth.’ What is the value of a truth that has an infinite number of forms?”
—Marc Hammer
On this day in history: Snow fell for the first time in Miami on January 19, 1977 (though for the most part the flakes melted when they hit the ground).
Recent Memoir & Biography
“SUFFERING WITHOUT SENTIMENTALITY”
“I wanted to abandon all this personal history, its darkness and secrecy, its private grievances, its well-licked sorrows and prides—to thrust it from me like a manhole cover,” Bette Howland wrote in her 1974 memoir W-3, which has been recently reissued.
ON WRITING AND LIFE
Gabriel Byrne’s new memoir, Walking with Ghosts, has been hailed as a “masterpiece” by Colum McCann and as “dreamy, lyrical, and utterly unvarnished” by Colm Toibin. Listen in as Byrne talks about memory, loneliness, and more.
ANOTHER SIDE OF SYLVIA
“There’s this sense in other biographies that she was only writing to please other people—to get love from her mother, her professors, her teachers—and I thought that short-changed her own sense of ambition and determination and the pleasure that she got out of writing.” Heather Clark on not falling into the Sylvia Plath trap.
Timely Tips
TREASURE, NOT TRASH
Last week I wrote about what everyone can do to ensure their own family photo collections are inviting to the next generation—for, whether we want to believe it or not, many kids simply throw away those once cherished pictures.
LISTEN UP
“What might happen if you read your memoir aloud as if talking to a therapist…?” David Perez ponders in this piece on the power of speaking your writing to life (spoiler alert: there is substantial power in the exercise).
FREE SELF-PUBLISHING WEBINAR JAN. 25
During “Everything You Want to Know About Self-Publishing but Are Afraid to Ask” you’ll “leave with a roadmap to the self-publishing journey so you can start taking action now.” Register for the free January 25 Zoom class here.
...and a Few More Links
The Statue of Liberty—Ellis Island Foundation has opened a new online shop.
“You can’t tell a life story or family history with 60,000 photos.”
Learn all about the Army Navy “E” Award, a.k.a. the Excellence in War Production Award (WWII).
Study sheds light on how the timing of memory is encoded in the hippocampus.
Singer Billie Eilish set to release photo book filled with personal memories.
Read the current issue of Brevity.
California–based personal historian Perry Hamilton reflects on a wedding.
Preserving memories one image at a time
Short Takes
Think YOUR KIDS would never throw away your cherished photos? I wouldn’t be so sure...
Imagine: Your treasured family photos, one day thrown in the trash—by your own kids?! Here, the secret to ensuring your photo memories live on.
I know you didn’t snap all those family pictures just for them to end up in the trash…did you?
What would you grab first if your house were on fire?
Your family photos, if you’re anything like most Americans, would be somewhere atop your theoretical list.
We value those old albums passed down from our parents. We cherish the letters Gram tied with a ribbon from when Pops was at war.
But you know what? Those family mementos of old were typically part of small collections, often curated into albums or stored neatly in a single box. In other words, easy to move—and inviting to go through on occasion.
What of your own photos? Are they curated? (Doubtful.) Is the collection in one place? (Yeah, right.) Is it accessible—emotionally accessible, not easy to reach on a shelf? (Oh, you don’t even understand this question?)
Allow me to explain: If your photos number in the thousands, exist across multiple social media platforms and devices, and finding one image that holds meaning poses a challenge—well, that’s not an emotionally accessible family archive.
What does make for an inviting family photo collection?
Your descendants will be more likely to hold on to your photos if:
they can find ones that matter to them
they know who is in the pictures
the stories behind the photos are evident
they are not overwhelmed by the sheer volume and disarray of the photo collection.
I write often about finding the stories behind our family photos, and I believe those stories are what make those photos valuable in the first place.
There are plenty of approaches to whittling down our photo collections, from Marie Kondo minimalism to genealogy purists’ detailed preservation. And I’m more than happy to connect you with a professional photo organizer who can take on the grunt work for you according to your own values.
But I urge you to go beyond mere organization. Paring down and labeling your collection will certainly go far in making your collection valuable to your kids. Adding stories and curating your collection to convey meaning, however, will make your family photo collection invaluable to them.
Would you like to learn more about how we can work together to preserve the stories behind your photos? Please schedule a time for a free 30-minute consultation.
Would you rather begin such a project on your own? I’ve got some resources for that, too:
free download
Grab your free copy of this helpful guide chock-full of tips and ideas for writing the stories behind your favorite family photos.
recommended read
Your memories live in your head and heart, but family photos, heirlooms, and mementos sure do call those memories forth—here’s how to use them to help you begin to create a life story book.
advanced techniques
Interested in paring down your family photos? Photographers call this process culling, and I’ve put together some best practices for culling your family photo collection with intention.
Life Story Links: January 5, 2020
Ways of remembering, first-person essays worth your time, and efforts to tell stories of real peoples from all walks of life: new reads for the new year.
“The years on someone’s gravestone are when they lived. The dash represents how they lived.”
—David Allen Lambert
![On this day in 1920, the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 in what would come to be known as the Curse of the Bambino. Pictured above: Lou Gehrig, George Herman [Babe] Ruth and Tony Lazzeri in a 1927 photograph by Un…](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/55d35604e4b08af97dadd334/1608672183720-I6KA9WATTCEDFFYYW7K5/lou-gehrig-babe-ruth-tony-lazzaeri-yankees.jpg)
On this day in 1920, the Boston Red Sox sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $125,000 in what would come to be known as the Curse of the Bambino. Pictured above: Lou Gehrig, George Herman [Babe] Ruth and Tony Lazzeri in a 1927 photograph by Underwood & Underwood, courtesy The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library.
All Peoples
SHOULD OLD ACQUAINTANCE BE FORGOT?
“From the pews of a church where white deacons once refused to seat African Americans, a group of Black singers in Alabama reminds us why preserving our memories of this historic year is vital—even if we'd rather just leave 2020 behind.” Take three minutes and forty-five seconds to relish the sounds and watch here:
MAKING HISTORY RELATABLE
The Canadian War Museum made a conscious effort to include a diversity of voices in its latest exhibit, “Forever Changed: Stories from the Second World War,” which turns to individual stories to make an impact. “You learn something about the person—maybe it’s hopeful, maybe it’s sad, maybe it’s scary—but each one stands on its own as something that you can feel a connection to.”
SHARE YOUR PERSONAL HISTORY
Are you an immigrant of color in America? NPR invites you to share a short audio clip telling about your family’s history involving “themes of identity and assimilation in America” for a new project looking at our country’s melting pot.
Flickers from the Past
AH, MEMORIES!
Dan Rodrick writes that memories “are like old toys that need to be taken from storage and wound up to make sure they still work. If you don’t do that, they stop speaking to you, and one day you’ve forgotten the sound of your father’s voice.”
“THE GHOST ON THE ZOOM CALL”
Judy Bolton-Fasman reflects on the weekly group video calls she has with her mom, who is in a nursing home, and “the times she sees her mother, my abuela, inhabiting a Zoom cubicle…. Abuela has been dead for over forty years.”
IN LETTERS
“There will be no (or vanishingly few) books of collected emails, and who would want them?” Dwight Garner wonders in this piece mourning the letters that will no longer be written, and remembering the great ones that were.
First Person Reads Worth Your Time
SELF-DISCOVERY THROUGH READING
For Jenny Offill, “Mrs. Dalloway is…[a book] to which I have mapped the twists and turns of my own autobiography over the years. Each time [I reread it], I have found shocks of recognition on the page, but they are always new ones, never the ones I was remembering.”
A VIRTUAL BEST-OF
The editors at Narratively (“human stories, boldy told”) have picked their favorite stories from the past year, and I recommend perusing their list. A few of my favorites:
“I Quit My Job at 50 to Reinvent Myself. Pro Tip: Don’t Do This.” by Ivy Eisenberg, laced with a wonderfully acerbic self-deprecating wit and canny cultural touchstones
“Snowed in with a Ghost” by Krista Diamond: “‘Building’s haunted,’ the landlord said, with more boredom in his voice than the statement merited. ‘Ramona. That’s the ghost’s name. She was here when this was a brothel.“”
“My Secret Life as a Coronavirus Nomad” by JB Nicholas: “As a freelance journalist, I’ve struggled financially for years. Then the pandemic hit and I got thrown on the street. But I will go on — I always do.”
...and a Few More Links
A beloved WWII photo comes to life in a virtual reunion.
A year-by-year glance over the first ten years of The Public Domain Review
Tips for anyone considering creating a family website
A look back at “the lives they lived”: remembering some of the artists, innovators and thinkers we lost in the past year
Short Takes
“What’s the best way to share my family photos & stories online?”
You want a digital record of your photos and other family history stuff but realize social media is not a good permanent solution. Consider a family website.
Sure, my primary focus is on creating books to preserve your stories—but at the end of the day, it’s my mission to help you ALL undertake some type of personal preservation project to ensure your legacy is passed on. And there’s no denying that we live much of our lives online these days.
While I love Facebook for keeping me updated as to what’s going on in my local community, and I can sure as heck get lost on some of my favorite Instagram feeds, I don’t recommend relying on ANY social media platform for permanent storage of your family archive. So, what if you want to share your family photos and stories online—for more than just a few fleeting likes?
I invited a memory-keeping colleague to share her thoughts on the matter—welcome NYC–based certified professional photo organizer Marci Brennan on why you should consider creating a family website:
Consider letting the whole family, from kids to grandparents, contribute to making your new family website.
Consider Making a Family Website
Staying in touch with family is paramount these days. Social media, for example, has been instrumental in helping us maintain relationships. But when it comes to tech, not everyone is comfortable with every social media site or app. This is even more important when considering family members of various ages. And social media sites often change their privacy policies. There’s also an increasing number of targeted, distracting ads on them.
Families are realizing that creating a dedicated family website is the best option. It provides a safe and secure place to share and preserve family history while avoiding the pitfalls of social media sites.
Many of these family websites are multi-functional. They offer a variety of services such as message boards, blogs, calendars, and other options. And they have aesthetically pleasing, user-friendly interfaces.
Here are a few of the benefits and features of a dedicated family website:
Access and sharing for all
Family sites level the accessibility field. Age and comfort with tech matter less, as the best sites make navigating their contents easy. All ages can access the site by typing a customized URL / domain name into their browser. Sites are device-agnostic. No special passwords or registration required.
easy connection to your family
Staying in contact with our families allows us to grow closer together. By using a family website, members can share their photos and videos as well as create events. It can become a family communication and library hub. Weddings, anniversaries, birthdays, and graduations can be shared, as well as other important events. Personal projects, movies, family recipes, and other tips can even have their own pages.
Preserving your history
Adding a family tree is a great way to manage, organize, and preserve your family heritage. Photos of people, special places, and memorabilia can inspire memories and spark conversations. Posting digitized versions of old media (such as 8mm, Super 8 and VHS tapes) add another layer of interest and history. Older family members can share and document their stories, preserving their memories. The current family as well as future generations will benefit.
Getting started
There are a few options to choose from when creating your family website. I recommend
…which are all dedicated to photography and family memories. Take a look at each site and see which one is best for you.
The Rewards
Many of us will accumulate a massive amount of photos in our lifetimes—tens of thousands, if not more. Perhaps your photos have been professionally scanned, organized and backed up on an external hard drive (or two) already. Or maybe, as the family historian, you have even done this yourself. While that is an essential step and an added layer of security, passing along your photo legacy on a family website to future generations is the ideal solution. This makes inheriting family photos much easier and more enjoyable for everyone. Sharing a curated family library with present and future generations is a timeless and uniquely precious gift.
about the author
Marci Brennan is a TPM certified professional photo organizer. She lives in Queens, New York, and works with her husband, videographer/photographer Chris George. Together they offer photo and video organizing services throughout New York City and beyond. At Past Present Pix their goal is to help busy families manage, organize, and preserve their photo and video collections so their valuable media is always at their fingertips and safely backed up.
Life Story Links: December 22, 2020
Last-minute reads while we await Santa's arrival: first-person tales to inspire & foment, diaries expected and not, plus some family history for good measure.
“Memoir begins not with event but with the intuition of meaning—with the mysterious fact that life can sometimes step free from the chaos and become story.”
—Sven Birkerts
A whimsical vintage Christmas card, created between 1950–1963, by Oscar Fabres, a Chilean illustrator who studied art in Paris and settled in New York in 1940, courtesy of the New-York Historical Society.
Accounting for Life
HONORING THE YEAR GONE BY
Austin–based video biographer Whitney Myers shares some thoughts on the sacred work of reflection including helpful pages you can print to guide you in New Year’s reflections and a bunch of fun conversation starters.
NOW IS THE TIME TO START (OR RESTART)
“About 10 years ago, I started adding a diary calendar feature to record at least one thing that happened every day—the profound and the mundane—so that I captured both the forest and the trees that make up the map of my life.” David G. Allan, who has kept a diary consistently since 1986, makes a compelling case for journaling about your life, now.
ACCIDENTAL DIARIES
A writer peruses his recent history through 14 years’ (and $12,017 worth) of Amazon purchases: “Looking through it all was unexpectedly cathartic; almost like a shorthand, accidental diary that I never got around to keeping.”
What’s Missing
AURAS OF POSSIBILITY
“Even as we regret who we haven’t become, we value who we are. We seem to find meaning in what’s never happened. Our self-portraits use a lot of negative space.” This exploration of our unlived lives—and what it’s like to explore them—is an intriguing and worthwhile read from Joshua Rothman.
THAT EMPTY FEELING
Last week I shared what I hope will amount to a dose of comfort for anyone grieving a loved one during this holiday season—a post that is all the more relevant as, right now, it seems as if we’re all grieving something.
First Person Tales
“SITTING ON MY MOTHER”
An encounter with his high school sweetheart (and her White Shoulders perfume) lead this writer on a path of rediscovery, reorientation, and re-disorientation that ends at his mother’s grave—and “an urge to reckon with the stories that make up [his] life.”
ARCHIVE OF AMERICAN VOICES
The latest season of the StoryCorps podcast explores how people deal with one of the only constants in life: that things change. Listen in to stories of how people cope while their lives are in flux, highlighting the lessons they’ve learned along the way. On the following episode, hear how Alice Mitchell and her younger brother Ibukun Owolabi found a way to move forward—from baby steps to teenagehood—after losing their mom:
CHILDHOOD MEMORIES
“According to my parents, the only real Santa was in Kirven’s Department Store. The other Santas around town, including the one at the new Kirven’s in Columbus Square, were ‘Santas helpers,’” Perry Hamilton, a personal historian in Laguna Hills, California, writes. Read about his childhood Santa realization here.
AN UNEXPECTED RESET
“I was tremblingly weak, and yet my COVID lifestyle was strangely enjoyable. My spirit floated somewhere above my suffering body, experiencing the days like shards of light piercing the dark.” Memoir coach Sarah White, a self-described “freelancer who rarely takes vacations,” on the surprising gifts of a relatively mild bout of COVID-19.
A Little Family History
HOLIDAY TRADITIONS OF YORE
After spending most of the last year writing about (and getting to better know!) her great-grandparents, Lisa O'Reilly wondered what Christmas traditions they brought with them when they came to America. Here the California–based personal historian dives into “Christmas Traditions from the Old Countries.”
HERITAGE DISCOVERY VIDEOS
The folks at RootsTech invite you to submit a personal video from 90 seconds to five minutes showcasing your heritage. Topics include food, culture, travel, and, as exemplified in the video below, traditions. They’re also seeking videos that highlight genealogy tips and tricks. Learn more here.
...and a Few More Links
New personal history business launches in the UK.
The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction now available in paperback
One mom learns that “my props were my memorabilia and my kids were my memories.”
The joy of reliving her childhood bookshelf
On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of “This American Life,” Ira Glass, a pioneer of the genre of audio narrative journalism, picks a few of his favorite episodes.
Examining the archives of writer Julian Barnes
Short Takes
Who (or what) are you missing this holiday season?
I hope you'll take comfort in these personal stories of vulnerability and loss during the holidays. (Sharing memories about loved ones is always a good thing.)
The 2020 Christmas and Hanukkah season will be anything but normal—but one constant is that stories are always welcome!
There’s nothing “usual” about these December holidays. This pandemic year has taken us all for an unexpected ride. And while funny memes and abundant comfort food may ease our path, they do little to truly soothe our souls.
I recently shared a post on social media: A 2020 gift list for grievers curated by Allison Gilbert, author of the wonderful book Passed and Present: Keeping Memories of Loved Ones Alive. One commenter noted how “everyone is grieving something this year.” Ah, yes, I thought—maybe that’s why the post resonated more deeply than usual with me.
And maybe that’s why I feel compelled to share a few resources for anyone who is, indeed, grieving during this season.
I am no stranger to holiday grief, having lost my mom unexpectedly just three days after Christmas in 2009, and two of the very personal posts below reveal my vulnerability at this time of year—as well as how story sharing about our deceased loved ones can be healing (dare I say, even joyful). I hope you can take a measure of comfort from my words.
The middle post offers up a list of memory-provoking questions designed to elicit holiday stories from a family member. While the original intent was to use them to guide a personal history interview with a loved one, again, this pandemic year may challenge that approach… So, if you are physically apart from your relatives, consider interviewing them from afar via Zoom (or a good old-fashioned phone call)—just remember to hit record on your smart phone or on a recorder to ensure you capture their memories for posterity! Another idea: Set aside some of your own time to write about your memories; these questions work just as well as writing prompts, after all.
Wherever you are, whomever you are missing, know that I am with you in spirit and wishing you peaceful and happy holidays!
Life Story Links: December 8, 2020
An array of recent stories on the how sharing our life stories can be transformative (for both the teller and the listener), plus memoir resources & news.
“There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.”
—Anaïs Nin
Bubble gum kids series of photographs by Cornell Capa for LIFE magazine, January 1947.
The Stories of Our Lives
LETTERS TO THE KIDS
"Somehow we had never really found time to tell stories. Everybody was just busy doing stuff, living our lives." After Bob Brody, a writer in NY, came to this realization, he spent a year writing letters to his grown children “as an act of love and memory…but also as a legacy—a repository of knowledge about the relatives who came before them.”
JUST SAY YES
What are the chances that we’ll all hear—and preserve—our parents’ stories if we don’t ask for them? Yeah, not great. Here are three easy ways to get the family storytelling ball rolling.
“NARRATIVE THERAPY”
Longtime South Carolina–based personal historian Mary Johnston shares how she helps Lowcountry writers transform memories into memoirs during the pandemic.
“TRUTHS THAT MATTER”
“I am haunted by what I don’t know about my father, and long to know, no matter how many pages of declassified documents pertaining to his old night fighter squadron that I’ve been able to obtain,” Paul Hendrickson writes in this meandering but worthwhile piece that’s, ultimately, about two writers and their complicated relationships with their fathers’ pasts.
Write On!
FIND SERENITY THROUGH WRITING
For the past several years Massachusetts–based personal historian Nancy West has led writing groups at which she promotes the value of establishing a daily writing practice. During the pandemic, she compiled her favorite "three-minute journaling" prompts into a book.
DEMENTIA LETTERS PROJECT
Kathryne Fassbender, CDCS, founder of Dementia Letters Project, invites you to write a letter—addressed to “yourself, your family, dementia, to a loved one with dementia, the community, God, anyone, everyone”—sharing your dementia-related story.
The Power of Our Voices
LETTERS TO HER SON
The New York Times calls Homeira Qaderi’s memoir, Dancing in the Mosque, “a stunning reminder that stories and words are what sustain us, even—and perhaps especially—under the most frightening circumstances.”
WOMEN’S VOICES
“This documentary [The Girl Inside] will make you think about the power of your own voice, the healing gift of story-telling, and what message you want your life to speak into the world.”
Miscellany: Food, Photos & Grief
FOLLOWING THE BREADCRUMB TRAIL
“Each bowl of okra soup or snippet of kitchen-table conversation is an ark from the past…” How to apply insights from chefs and culinary historians to cook family recipes that hold special meaning to you, even if the elders who originally made them are gone.
WHEN WE WERE YOUNG
A baby's first sip of stout, picnics beside cars, and braving cold seas: Nostalgic photos showing family life in Britain between the ’40s and ’70s collected in new book.
AMIDST HER GRIEF
“There was no gathering or reception after, no hugs and fellowship with our family and friends, no stories exchanged in anyone’s yard,” memoirist Nicole Chung writes in this poignant piece about the signposts of mourning and honoring our grief.
...and a Few More Links
Older adults remember past events with remarkable accuracy, new study finds.
Forever ambassador Ellen Thompson-Jennings details layouts and resources for making your own family stories book.
One family’s Milanese Jewish recipes that survived generations of secrecy
Winter online writing classes from Creative Nonfiction (including historical narratives and the thirty-minute memoir)
Thoughts from writer Sarah Cannon on writing a hybrid memoir
Interesting thoughts on the idea that memory lies at the heart of various academic disciplines
Short Takes