The Memoir Revolution

Tag: interview

August 29, 2011

Grace Notes and Self Confidence Tracy Seeley Interview Pt. 5

Tracy Seeley

Book Review, Creative Nonfiction, interview, Kansas, memoir, Midwest, Ruby Slippers, Tracy Seeley

I love anecdotes that momentarily seem out of the main line of the story because they remind us that the world is a richly interconnected place, thick with story and meaning even over there in the margins.

Written by

Jerry Waxler
August 17, 2011

Conversation versus Story Style in Memoir

Author Interview, Literary Non-fiction, Tracy Seeley

Book Review, Creative Nonfiction, interview, Kansas, memoir, Midwest, Ruby Slippers, Tracy Seeley

Your writing achieved that state that I enjoy: clear, compelling, easy to read, and yet it still evokes thought provoking, sometimes moving images and ideas. During your journey to acquire your language arts, can you think of any particular tip or advice that moved you along, that made your sentences clearer?

Written by

Jerry Waxler
August 11, 2011

Memoir writer on conforming, rewriting, publishing

Tracy Seeley

Book Review, Creative Nonfiction, interview, Kansas, memoir, Midwest, Ruby Slippers, Tracy Seeley

Small presses, too, though, want to know how your book is like others that have gone before (and gone on to succeed), as well as how it’s a new and exciting, one-of-a-kind thing. It’s a funny kind of challenge to describe your work in both terms. But My Ruby Slippers does belong to a tradition…

Written by

Jerry Waxler
August 5, 2011

Stretching the Memoir Form, Tracy Seeley Interview, Part 2

Literary Non-fiction, Tracy Seeley

Book Review, Creative Nonfiction, interview, memoir, Ruby Slippers, Tracy Seeley

The edict to “show, not tell” does a serious disservice to creative nonfiction writers, and to the genre. It’s not the same as fiction, even though it may share many techniques, and it shouldn’t be forced to be fiction made out of “true facts.”

Written by

Jerry Waxler
February 21, 2011

How a Novelist Strives for Authentic Reality

Author Interview, Judi Hendricks

creativity, dialog, fact, Fiction, interview, Judi Hendricks, memoir, novel

Experts, like Brian Boyd in “The Evolution of Stories” propose that humans began to tell stories as a sort of cognitive playground where they experiment with alternate scenarios. You seem to be the perfect model for that theory. In “Bread Alone” you turned your imagination loose at the boundaries of reality. So on your fifth…

Written by

Jerry Waxler
November 8, 2010

Interview with Memoir and YA Author Author Beth Kephart

Author Interview, Beth Kephart

advice, author, Beth Kephart, interview, memoir, Philadelphia Stories, YA

Beth: It all comes back to those themes. I have done all my shaping–all my deciding about what goes in and what stays out, about how much emphasis to put on one thing or another–by standing back and asking myself: Does this scene advance your themes? Often some of the very best stories must be…

Written by

Jerry Waxler
September 23, 2010

Interview with Diana Raab about Healing With Words: A Writer’s Cancer Journey

Author Interview, Cancer

breast cancer, cancer, Diana Raab, healing, interview, Journaling, memoir

My mother gave me my first journal when I was ten years old after my grandmother committed suicide in my childhood home. She didn’t know of any other way to help me cope with the loss of my beloved grandmother who was also my caretaker. She told me to pour my feelings onto the pages…

Written by

Jerry Waxler
August 4, 2010

Stephen Markley Interview Part 6: Post-publication blues?

Author Interview

author, career, gender, How-to, interview, memoir, Publish, Stephen Markley, Writing

It’s really rare to get an opportunity like this: to be young and single and unattached and constantly inspired and ferociously hungry. There aren’t enough hours in the day to get every idea I have onto paper. I sometimes blink and wonder if all this has actually happened for me.

Written by

Jerry Waxler
July 20, 2010

Stephen Markley Interview Part 4: Structure of a Memoir

Author Interview

author, career, courage, interview, memoir, meta, parody, Publish, risk, satire, Stephen Markley, structure

by Jerry Waxler The first thing that caught my attention when I picked up Stephen Markley’s “Publish this Book” was that it was a parody of itself, a memoir about “writing this very book.” This trick of self-conscious awareness, or “meta” as it has come to be called, played a big role in my thought…

Written by

Jerry Waxler
July 16, 2010

Stephen Markley Interview Part 3: Satire, Truth, and Risk

Author Interview

author, career, courage, interview, launching, memoir, risk, satire, Stephen Markley

But the kind of writing I do–and the kind of writer I want to be–is pretty much predicated on the idea that I am going to swing for the fences more often than not. What some call fearlessness, others will call dreck, and there ain’t a whole lot I can do about that.

Written by

Jerry Waxler