18 Comments
Aug 11Liked by Brooke Warner

What a beautiful compilation of these four memoirs. I’m looking forward to diving into them. It’s great that memoir is having its moment.

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It is great!

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I’m super excited as always about this next class. Thanks for teaching me and showing me how to grow as a writer. I love your classes! See you there!

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Thank you, Lisa! ❤️

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This is so exciting. I’ve registered already.

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Aug 14Liked by Brooke Warner

I am so looking forward to this!

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Thanks for this inspiring post Brooke and putting into words this memoir movement we're witnessing all around us. The class looks amazing and I hope to join!

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This was uplifting and interesting. Thanks for sharing.

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Thanks for reading!

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No problem!

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Aug 12Liked by Brooke Warner

Love 💕

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Aug 11Liked by Brooke Warner

Fabulous. Thanks for sharing insights into these women writers, their writing techniques and creativity, how they are changing the way we think about memoir. It’s really inspiring!

The upcoming class sounds amazing.

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Fantastic and inspiring post, Brooke! There are so many innovative and exciting memoirs these days, from the well-known to the not as well known, but people with enriching and insightful stories to share. And what's interesting, is how we all learn something for ourselves from each one. The takeaway of memoir is that an individual, personal story can be so universal. It still kind of blows my mind, that truth and human experience is for all of us to share and take in as we need it for our own growth and transformation. Looking forward to teaching this class with you, Brooke!

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Yet again, I found your post informative, encouraging, and though I don't think of myself as a memoirist per se, you've got me thinking about the upcoming course - an opportunity to "be in the room" with all of you.

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Love your post, but I’m not persuaded that memoir is having a moment, now. Hasn’t it been having a moment for a while? What’s different now?

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I wrote another whole post about this:

https://brookewarner.substack.com/p/a-golden-age-for-memoir

It has to do with the massive influx of writers of color into the space in the past several years, publishing being more open to different ways of doing memoir. More "other genre" writers, especially poets, influencing the memoir space. More openness to complete experimentation in ways that would have been off-limits even five years ago, evidence by books like The Story Game, whose author is featured on my podcast this week (and just happens to be on the same subject of "new ways of doing memoir": https://podcast.shewrites.com/new-ways-of-thinking-about-memoir/

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Thank you for pointing me to your earlier post. It clarifies that what's different now is the publishing industry's openness to people of color and ways of telling stories beyond the traditional narrative arc. I'm reminded of The Anti-Racist Writing Workshop by Felicia Rose Chavez. As a teacher, she invites writers to "own the language of craft" by asking them to define what they're actually doing in their writing, instead of writing to fit prescribed expectations.

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Is that a new industry identifying term, "other genre writer"? If so, as a poet and former academic now writing a memoir, I happily embrace it! Thank you, Brooke, for drawing attention to the moment and helping us hitch a ride on the memoir star!

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