Author: Mary Karr Publisher: HarperCollins ISBN: 0062223089 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 256
Book Description
Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning teaching prizes at Syracuse. (The writing program there produced such acclaimed authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas.) In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and “black belt sinner,” providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers’ experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr’s own process. (Plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told— and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth.) As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King’s On Writing and Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today’s most popular literary forms—a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft.
Author: Sven Birkerts Publisher: Graywolf Press ISBN: 1555973396 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 147
Book Description
The Art Of series is a new line of books reinvigorating the practice of craft and criticism. Each book will be a brief, witty, and useful exploration of fiction, nonfiction, or poetry by a writer impassioned by a singular craft issue. The Art Of volumes will provide a series of sustained examinations of key but sometimes neglected aspects of creative writing by some of contemporary literature's finest practioners. In The Art of Time in Memoir, critic and memoirist Sven Birkerts examines the human impulse to write about the self. By examining memoirs such as Vladimir Nabokov's Speak, Memory; Virginia Woolf's unfinished A Sketch of the Past; and Mary Karr's The Liars' Club, Birkerts describes the memoirist's essential art of assembling patterns of meaning, stirring to life our own sense of past and present.
Author: Russell Baker Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt ISBN: 9780395901502 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 244
Book Description
In this perfect companion for anyone beguiled by memoirs or embarking on writing one, nine distinguished authors -- Russell Baker, Jill Ker Conway, Annie Dillard, Ian Frazier, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Alfred Kazin, Frank McCourt, Toni Morrison, and Eileen Simpson -- reflect on the writing process.
Author: Tom Hart Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin ISBN: 1250113350 Category : Art Languages : en Pages : 461
Book Description
#1 New York Times bestselling author and Eisner-nominated cartoonist Tom Hart has written a poignant and instructive guide for all aspiring graphic memoirists detailing the tenets of artistry and story-telling inherent in the medium. Hart examines what makes a graphic memoir great, and shows you how to do it. With two dozen professional examples and a deep-dive into his own story, Hart encourages readers to hone their signature style in the best way to represent their journeys on the page. With clear examples and visual aids, The Art of the Graphic Memoir is emotive, creative, and accessible. Whether you're a comics fan, comic book creator, memoirist, biographer or autobiographer, there’s something inside for everyone.
Author: Mary Karr Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0061885479 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 582
Book Description
The Liars' Club brought to vivid, indelible life Mary Karr's hardscrabble Texas childhood. Cherry, her account of her adolescence, "continued to set the literary standard for making the personal universal" (Entertainment Weekly). Now Lit follows the self-professed blackbelt sinner's descent into the inferno of alcoholism and madness—and to her astonishing resurrection. Karr's longing for a solid family seems secure when her marriage to a handsome, Shakespeare-quoting blueblood poet produces a son they adore. But she can't outrun her apocalyptic past. She drinks herself into the same numbness that nearly devoured her charismatic but troubled mother, reaching the brink of suicide. A hair-raising stint in "The Mental Marriott," with an oddball tribe of gurus and saviors, awakens her to the possibility of joy and leads her to an unlikely faith. Not since Saint Augustine cried, "Give me chastity, Lord—but not yet!" has a conversion story rung with such dark hilarity. Lit is about getting drunk and getting sober; becoming a mother by letting go of a mother; learning to write by learning to live. Written with Karr's relentless honesty, unflinching self-scrutiny, and irreverent, lacerating humor, it is a truly electrifying story of how to grow up—as only Mary Karr can tell it.
Author: Mary Karr Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 1101650745 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 290
Book Description
From Mary Karr comes this gorgeously written, often hilarious story of her tumultuous teens and sexual coming-of-age. Picking up where the bestselling The Liars' Club left off, Karr dashes down the trail of her teen years with customary sass, only to run up against the paralyzing self-doubt of a girl in bloom. Fleeing the thrills and terrors of adolescence, she clashes against authority in all its forms and hooks up with an unforgettable band of heads and bona-fide geniuses. Parts of Cherry will leave you gasping with laughter. Karr assembles a self from the smokiest beginnings, delivering a long-awaited sequel that is both "bawdy and wise" (San Francisco Chronicle).
Author: Marion Roach Smith Publisher: Grand Central Publishing ISBN: 1455501824 Category : Self-Help Languages : en Pages : 140
Book Description
An extraordinary "practical resource for beginners" looking to write their own memoir—now new and revised (Kirkus Reviews)! The greatest story you could write is one you've experienced yourself. Knowing where to start is the hardest part, but it just got a little easier with this essential guidebook for anyone wanting to write a memoir. Did you know that the #1 thing that baby boomers want to do in retirement is write a book—about themselves? It's not that every person has lived such a unique or dramatic life, but we inherently understand that writing a memoir—whether it's a book, blog, or just a letter to a child—is the single greatest path to self-examination. Through the use of disarmingly frank, but wildly fun tactics that offer you simple and effective guidelines that work, you can stop treading water in writing exercises or hiding behind writer's block. Previously self-published under the title, Writing What You Know: Raelia, this book has found an enthusiastic audience that now writes with intent.
Author: Chris Rush Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux ISBN: 0374719462 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 385
Book Description
Lambda Literary Award Finalist | A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Named a best book of 2019 by Parade The Light Years is a joyous and defiant coming-of-age memoir set during one of the most turbulent times in American history "This stunningly beautiful, original memoir is driven by a search for the divine, a quest that leads Rush into some dangerous places . . . The Light Years is funny, harrowing, and deeply tender." —Kate Tuttle, The L.A. Times "Rush is a fantastically vivid writer, whether he’s remembering a New Jersey of 'meatballs and Windex and hairspray' or the dappled, dangerous beauty of Northern California, where 'rock stars lurked like lemurs in the trees.' Read if you loved... Just Kids by Patti Smith." —Leah Greenblatt, Entertainment Weekly “As mythic and wild with love, possibility, and danger as the decades it spans, you’ll read The Light Years with your breath held. Brutal, buoyant and wise to the tender terror of growing up, Chris Rush has written a timeless memoir of boyhood in the American wilderness.” —Emma Cline, author of The Girls Chris Rush was born into a prosperous, fiercely Roman Catholic, New Jersey family. But underneath the gleaming mid-century house, the flawless hostess mom, and the thriving businessman dad ran an unspoken tension that, amid the upheaval of the late 1960s, was destined to fracture their precarious facade. His older sister Donna introduces him to the charismatic Valentine, who places a tab of acid on twelve-year-old Rush’s tongue, proclaiming: “This is sacrament. You are one of us now.” After an unceremonious ejection from an experimental art school, Rush heads to Tucson to make a major drug purchase and, still barely a teenager, disappears into the nascent American counterculture. Stitching together a ragged assemblage of lowlifes, prophets, and fellow wanderers, he seeks kinship in the communes of the west. His adolescence is spent looking for knowledge, for the divine, for home. Given what Rush confronts on his travels—from ordinary heartbreak to unimaginable violence—it is a miracle he is still alive. The Light Years is a prayer for vanished friends, an odyssey signposted with broken and extraordinary people. It transcends one boy’s story to perfectly illustrate the slow slide from the optimism of the 1960s into the darker and more sinister 1970s. This is a riveting, heart-stopping journey of discovery and reconciliation, as Rush faces his lost childhood and, finally, himself.
Author: Rosemary Keevil Publisher: Simon and Schuster ISBN: 1631527789 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 326
Book Description
When her brother dies of AIDS and her husband dies of cancer in the same year, Rosemary is left on her own with two young daughters and antsy addiction demons dancing in her head. This is the nucleus of The Art of Losing It a young mother jerking from emergency to emergency as the men in her life drop dead around her; a high-functioning radio show host waging war with her addictions while trying to raise her two little girls who just lost their daddy; and finally, a stint in rehab and sobriety that ushers in a fresh brand of chaos instead of the tranquility her family so desperately needs. Heartrending but ultimately hopeful, The Art of Losing It is the story of a struggling mother who finds her way—slowly, painfully—from one side of grief and addiction to the other.
Author: Rachael Herron Publisher: HGA Publishing ISBN: 1940785421 Category : Language Arts & Disciplines Languages : en Pages : 191
Book Description
This is your roadmap for completing the memoir you've dreamed about writing. "Rachael Herron resonates with our audience, and not just because she knows her stuff—she does—or because she's hilarious—she is—but because her honesty and earnestness come through in all her messaging." Samantha Sanders, Writer’s Digest Writing memoir is daunting! You’re the expert on your life, naturally, but narrating and organizing your own experiences in the best way can feel impossible. Many writers become frustrated in early drafting stages and quit after a couple of brief attempts. Learn from bestselling memoirist Rachael Herron (who teaches this class at Stanford Continuing Studies) how to fast-draft your memoir while keeping its structure compelling. Learn how to frame your life’s story and give it a natural arc to keep your reader glued to the page. Figure out how to handle those family and friends you’re writing about. Explore what truth means in memoir. Work quickly to quiet the inner critic. Most of all, learn how to get out of your own way to get the words on the page. You can do this! Rachael will show you how. CLICK BUY NOW!
Author: Mary Karr
Author: Sven Birkerts
Author: Russell Baker
Author: Tom Hart
Author: Mary Karr
Author: Mary Karr
Author: Marion Roach Smith
Author: Chris Rush
Author: Rosemary Keevil
Author: Rachael Herron