“What is writing but we put our heart on a piece of paper and then we hand those pages to somebody else?”
—Megan Stielstra

Reading memoir…

MORE THAN A LIFE ON THE PAGE
“Sometimes, a writer can use more than their own recollections to tell a personal story.” John Hendrickson, author of the reported memoir Life on Delay, offers up six memoirs that go beyond memories.

FORMATIVE FRIENDSHIP
“By the time I was a junior at college, I’d already met everyone I cared to know.” This short excerpt from Will Schwalbe’s new memoir, We Should Not Be Friends, is as irresistible as the unlikely friendship he chronicles.

“STILL LIFE AT 80”
“Sometimes the present is interrupted by a memory so vivid that I am in two places at once.... These are the moments in which past and present are fused. I like to imagine them as little paperweights, holding my life together before it all blows away,” Abigail Thomas writes in her new memoir. Read a review here.

…and writing memoir

A LITERARY QUADRANGLE
“Only you and I know who wrote this book,” Gloria Swanson said to Wayne Lawson at a launch party for her memoir, Swanson on Swanson, in 1980. The ghostwriter sets the record straight four decades later.

THE SELF, REVISED
“It’s the human imperative, this piecing together of a life. And so, word by word, we lay down our tracks.” Dani Shapiro on discovering that her family’s secret was embedded in her writing before even she knew the truth.

TO BETRAY OR NOT TO BETRAY?
“I had anchored myself in the why—not just why I’m writing the book, but also why I included certain details.” This story about the ethics of writing about others has a paywall, but you can get a free trial subscription if you’re interested. (I am a paid subscriber to The Isolation Journals with Suleika Jaouad and highly recommend it both for her heartfelt, raw first person writing and her interviews and writing prompts.)

HISTORY AND IMAGINATION, CONVERGED
“A writer is interested only in his origins. That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? A writer wants to know, at every level, where it is he comes from.” Chris McCormick on visiting the Armenia he had brought to the page via his imagination.

FICTION’S BLURRY BORDERS
“Now I think we all are...living our lives and making up stories at the same time, our brains running smoothly down both tracks.” Jesse Lee Kercheval tries to figure out where life ends and fiction begins.

Sending messages across time

BEQUEATH YOUR VALUES
Last week I shared recommendations for resources to help write your ethical will—including a nitty-gritty workbook and a book with 12 guiding questions and a wealth of inspirational examples.

LOVE LANGUAGE
After her father’s cancer diagnosis, Google Translate became Mium Gleeson’s tool for survival—and then, remembrance. Read her beautiful meditation on keeping her dad close.

Contextualizing research

“A WILD ARCHIVE”
Imagine being one of the researchers invited to sort though a centuries-old cache of undelivered mail, all seized from merchant ships during wars from the 1650s to the early 19th century? Here’s a fascinating look at what some of the letters reveal.

UNCOVERING AN 1860S NEIGHBORHOOD
As a visitor to NYC’s Tenement Museum, I have wondered at the wealth of research that goes into creating the stories of the everyday families they highlight. Listen in as a museum VP walks through some behind-the-scenes research into a new exhibit:

RootsTech recap

The world’s largest annual family history conference was held earlier this month and a flurry of posts around the interwebs chronicled the goings-on. Here are a few highlights:

• “Making family history discoveries is one thing. Learning how to craft those discoveries into stories that will capture the attention of the next generation is another matter entirely.” Watch the hour-long presentation, “The Anatomy of a Story,” by Crista Cowen, here.

• The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the organizers of RootsTech, share recent research that provides some empirical evidence that learning family history has a positive influence on adolescent identity development. Read the study abstract here.

• Ancestry announced the launch of Storymaker Studio, a new suite of tools on the Ancestry app.

• There is a rich back catalog of classes that you can watch on-demand at the RootsTech site.

• You can also virtually browse the exhibitors that were in-person at the event this year.

...and a few more links

• From The Atlantic: “20 Biopics That Are Actually Worth Watching”

• A look at a new documentary, Film, the Living Record of Our Memory

• iMemories named to Fast Company’s annual list of the world’s most innovative companies for 2023

• “Stories my father told me shaped my life. Later, I learned they weren’t true.”

• On this episode of Things That Matter with Martie McNabb: A pen, a purpose, and a passion

• A publisher who was arrested while preparing to release an unauthorized biography of Xi Jinping has been freed after serving a 10-year sentence.

• Boy recreates grandmother’s photos from 1955 to help her after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's

• Vintage photos show what life was like in the White House during John F. Kennedy’s presidency.

Short takes