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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
How to turn an oral history into a compelling story
Four steps to help you turn spoken stories into engaging written narratives—so once the family history interview is done, you can create a lasting legacy.
Once you’ve interviewed your family member(s), you’ve got the most important step under your belt—congrats! But 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?
So many people land on my website in search of family history interview questions (are you one of those folks?). And while ASKING the questions—and recording them—is literally the best first step (even if you never do anything else with the recordings, you have them!)…it’s always my hope that you’ll go a few steps further and hone those interviews into compelling narratives.
This process involves capturing the storyteller's voice, structuring the narrative effectively, enriching it with context, and editing with care. Each step is crucial in preserving the authenticity and emotional depth of the original accounts, ensuring your stories will be read (happily!) for generations.
If you’d like to conduct the personal history interviews then hand them over for professional editing, please reach out to schedule a phone call to see how we might work together. If you’d like to give it a go yourself, here are some concrete steps—as well as further reading on each topic—to help you turn raw conversation into engaging stories.
4 steps to turn your family history interview into great stories
Step 1: Conduct thoughtful and open-ended interviews.
A compelling narrative starts with a strong foundation: the interview. Whether you’re sitting down with a loved one in person or recording a conversation remotely, the key is to create an atmosphere of trust and openness.
Start with broad, open-ended questions. Instead of asking, “Did you like school?” try, “What was a typical school day like for you?”
Encourage storytelling. Prompt with, “Can you describe that moment in detail?” or “What did it feel like when that happened?”
Follow the unexpected. Some of the most powerful stories emerge when we let conversations flow naturally rather than sticking rigidly to a script.
Record (with permission). This allows you to focus on listening rather than scrambling to take notes.
PRO TIP: Small details often unlock the most vivid memories. Ask about sounds, smells, and emotions to deepen the storytelling experience.
Further Reading: "Best questions to open your family history interview"
Step 2: Preserve the storyteller’s voice.
One of the most powerful aspects of oral storytelling is the subject’s voice. When converting spoken words into written text, aim to retain the unique rhythm, expressions, and personality of the speaker.
Transcribe with care. Capture natural speech patterns, but remove filler words like “um” and “you know” for readability.
Enliven the story with dialogue. If a story includes conversations, write them as scenes rather than summaries. Direct quotes help maintain authenticity.
Use first-person narration when possible. This makes the story feel personal and immersive.
For example, instead of writing: “My grandfather worked in the shipyards during the war. He remembers it was hard work.”
Try: “The shipyards were cold in the winter, blistering in the summer. I’d come home with hands so sore I could barely hold my fork at dinner. But we had a job to do, and we did it.”
Further Reading: “Write the way you talk—your family will thank you”
Step 3: Make the structure easy to navigate—and impactful.
Oral storytelling is often nonlinear—memories surface out of order, details emerge in layers. But written narratives benefit from clear organization.
Consider what structure best serves the story and resonates with the intended audience. This could be:
Chronological: Ideal for life stories or historical accounts.
Thematic: If certain themes (resilience, migration, perseverance) emerge strongly, organize the story around them.
Vignette-style: A collection of short, evocative moments can sometimes be more powerful than a strict timeline.
PRO TIP: When shaping the narrative, think like a reader: What details create tension, curiosity, or emotional connection? What order makes the story most engaging?
Further Reading: “How to create a life timeline for your memoir writing project”
Step 4: Enrich the story with context and details.
While spoken stories often assume shared understanding, the written version benefits from additional historical context. Future-proof your family history book by doing the following:
Add historical and cultural details. If a relative mentions a significant event, include a brief explanation for future readers. The COVID-19 pandemic is fresh in our minds, for instance, but won’t be immediately known by the next generation.
Describe places and settings. What did their childhood home look like? What was the makeup of the neighborhood where they were raised? Were their schools integrated, religious?
Clearly identify people. Use names rather than just “he” or “she,” and clarify relationships whenever possible to avoid confusion.
Further Reading: “How to edit your family history so it will make sense 20 years from now”
By transforming oral histories into written narratives, you’re creating something lasting—something that can be held, reread, and passed down through generations. It’s a labor of love, but also an act of preservation, ensuring that the voices of the past continue to speak to the future.
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
A new book to help you write the hard stories
Brave the Page by trauma-informed writing coach Megan Febuary shares how to probe memories, write about your hard experiences, and find healing.
Brave the Page: How Writing Our Hard Stories Brings Healing and Wholeness by Megan Febuary was released in June 2025 (Baker Books).
While many of my clients come to me wanting to undertake personal history interviews to capture their stories, others endeavor to write their stories themselves—with a little help. In those instances, I act as a memoir coach, meeting them at whatever stage they are currently at by providing guidance, support, and editing. When their stories delve into traumatic experiences from their past, we inevitably have to slow things down and focus as much on self-care as on the writing. That often comes as a surprise to them.
Writing hard stories is…well, hard. But as Megan Febuary puts forth in her new book, Brave the Page (Baker Books, June 2025), doing so may also bring healing and wholeness.
Inside “Brave the Page”
In Brave the Page, Febuary shares more than once that “story healing,” as she calls it, has nothing to do with being a writer—rather, “it is about paying attention to the stories within and digging into the deep questions that our stories ask of us.” Sound scary? It can—and perhaps, should—be: Going deep and writing about trauma will inevitably make one feel some of that trauma again; as the title of her book suggests, you’ll need to be brave.
What Febuary offers up in this book is a whole lot of support. That support takes the form of:
inspiring personal stories
research-driven approaches to self-care and trauma-focused writing
gentle encouragement (including a mantra at the beginning of each chapter)
and plenty of guidance (the writing prompts are generative and clear, and will certainly get your pen moving across the page).
There are moments in the book where, if you haven’t been in therapy, you may feel thrown by some of the psychology jargon (attachment styles, inner child healing, trauma responses)—but don’t be put off by this. In every instance that the author describes the rationale behind her approach to story healing, she (a) footnotes her references if you’d like to dig further; and (b) perhaps more importantly, describes how these concepts have played out in her own life and writing. There is an autobiographical bent to the book that lays the foundation for all the guidance and writing prompts that follow.
Are you ready to write about your trauma?
Febuary is deeply knowledgable about writing about trauma. She has journaled since her youth and braved the page quite literally when she began putting words to her shame around a childhood diagnosis of scleroderma, and later to abuse she suffered as a girl and sexual violence as an adult. She earned her master’s degree at a school that specialized in narrative-focused trauma care, and she “researched the body as storyteller, learning how it becomes the gatekeeper for the stories too tender to address until we are emotionally available for them.”
Brave the Page, I hope, will help you know when you are emotionally available for your own hard stories, as well as how to support yourself and heal while doing so. It will teach you how to be a “compassionate witness to your life” and to feel safe while doing the tender work of probing your memories.
Do you feel like you need permission to write about your challenges? Permission to put words to your feelings of shame? Permission to claim your story as your own? Permission to go slow—to unbury memories that have been long hidden, but at your own pace? You’ll find all that permission and more here.
Your story is not finished. It is ever-evolving, and writing about it, Febuary describes, is a “spiritual progression.”
And you must keep at it, even when it feels hard. “This work of using our voices,” she writes, “is a muscle we must train, and it becomes stronger each time we do it.”
Megan Febuary and I are in agreement: Writing through your trauma will be hard—but it will also be transformational. I recommend picking up a copy of her book to be your companion on your personal story healing journey. And she hopes that your copy will be well-loved and visibly used: “May [it] be dog-eared and highlighted, may its pages be torn out and posted as reminders, and may its edges be filled with your own brave reflections.” Mine is.
So, go forth and find your voice…and be gentle with yourself on the way ❤️
P.S. If something about this post stirred you, but you don’t feel quite ready to “brave the page,” I implore you to buy the book anyway. In my opinion, YOU are exactly who this book is for. Let it sit on your bedside table for a year if you must. Once you dip into it, those stirrings will become stronger, and so will your resolve to give voice to your memories and to put pen to paper. Let Megan Febuary plant the seeds; you will sow them when you are ready.
Note: This is an unsolicited review of a book I purchased at full price. I did not receive any compensation or free products in exchange, and any endorsements within this post are my own.
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
The case for classic design
A book that captures your legacy should be designed with longevity in mind, so it remains engaging and accessible for generations. It should be beautiful, too.
Black leather and a debossed title elevate this book cover from boring to elegant, signaling the timeless page design inside.
I have a pair of Adidas Spezial sneakers that I purchased in the 1980s and still wear today. Adidas debuted the style in 1979, and it’s sold in an array of colorways as part of the Originals line on their website in 2025.
I have an Armani tailored black blazer that I bought in the late 1990s that I still wear today. Its materials and craftsmanship were worth the hundreds of dollars I invested in the piece when I worked at Vogue, and no one would guess it wasn’t brand new now.
My fashion sense has always tended towards fine classics (often embellished with bolder accessories that I can swap out as the times change). “Classic,” in the way I view it, is a synonym for “timeless.”
And “classic, timeless style” is an aesthetic I also apply to the heirloom books I create for my clients.
You won’t find trendy design approaches or typeface choices that broadcast a specific decade (unless that’s befitting the stories within, of course!) at Modern Heirloom Books. Instead, we’ll work together to find a design that feels right to the client and their stories, while also respecting tradition and legibility—so your book feels fresh and of its time, no matter when your descendants are reading it.
Why I opt for classic book design
Have you ever picked up a book and known it was old despite its pristine condition? Your grandparents’ wedding album, perhaps (pillowy white leather with gold italic imprinting, say)? Or a softcover book that’s been sitting on your shelf for decades (Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret comes to mind for me, with its instantly recognizable cover treatments across different editions)?
Design, like fashion, can date itself. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—retro aesthetics have their place; but for life story books, I aim for something more enduring. A book that captures your legacy should not feel like a product of a fleeting trend. It should be designed with longevity in mind, so it remains engaging and accessible for future generations.
“Designers choose typefaces by considering the history of type, the combinations of form, the balance between readability and surprise, the content and themes at hand, and the designer’s own desires and interests,” Ellen Lupton explains in Thinking with Type.
The two variables sandwiched in the middle of that sentence are of the utmost importance to me when designing an heirloom book:
Finding “the balance between readability and surprise.”
Serving “the content and themes at hand.”
Ample white space gives a life story book breathing room.
The Balance Between Readability and Surprise
Readability should always take precedence in book design, particularly for long-form personal narratives. A typeface that prioritizes elegance over clarity—one with too much flair, too little contrast, or an overly condensed structure—becomes a distraction rather than an enhancement.
This is why many classic books use time-honored typefaces such as Garamond, Baskerville, or Times New Roman. These fonts have endured for centuries because they provide that perfect harmony: sophisticated yet unintrusive, distinctive yet universally readable.
Surprise, however, is where personality comes in. This might be through subtle flourishes—a well-placed drop cap, a unique yet restrained display font for chapter titles, a slightly unexpected but still harmonious color palette. These are touches that make a book feel special without overpowering the narrative itself.
Serving the Content and Themes at Hand
A book about a family’s multigenerational journey deserves a design that reflects continuity. A memoir detailing a life of adventure may benefit from visual storytelling elements like maps or archival-style captions. The key is ensuring that every design choice serves the story rather than pulling attention away from it.
Elements such as generous margins, high-quality paper, and a well-proportioned layout all contribute to a book’s readability and aesthetic longevity. White space, for example, isn’t just about making a page look elegant—it allows the reader’s eyes to rest, giving weight to the words and photographs that matter most.
This book of correspondence between a father and his daughter during her time at Georgetown University used Adobe Caslon, the same font in the Georgetown logo, for display type; Caslon was originally designed in 1722, and its modern iterations are still revered for its readability and elegance.
What makes a timeless book design?
There are a few fundamental principles that contribute to classic, enduring book design:
Typography with integrity: Typefaces that have stood the test of time, with an emphasis on readability and subtle beauty.
Thoughtful layouts: Balanced margins, considered line spacing, and harmonious text hierarchy to create an effortless reading experience.
Understated elegance: A design that enhances the story without distracting from it, avoiding overly trendy or gimmicky elements.
Quality materials: A book’s physical form is part of its longevity—fine archival paper, durable binding, and careful printing methods ensure that it lasts as an heirloom.
When you commission a personal history book, you are investing in something that will outlive you—a physical manifestation of your legacy. The stories within are timeless, and the design should reflect that. A well-designed book will not only be read; it will become a treasured heirloom, passed down and revisited for generations.
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