Nonfiction Memoir

From drawing a map of a remembered neighborhood to signing a form releasing yourself to take risks in your work, Roorbach offers innovative techniques that will trigger ideas for all writers. Writing Life Stories is a classic text that appears on countless creative nonfiction and composition syllabi the world over. This updated 10th anniversary edition gives you the same friendly instruction and stimulating exercises along with updated information on current memoir writing trends, ethics, internet research, and even marketing ideas.

Mamah Borthwick was an energetic, intelligent, and charismatic woman who earned a master's degree at a time when few women even attended college, translated writings by a key figure of the early feminist movement, and taught at one of Germany's best schools for boys. She is best known, however, as the mistress of the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and for her shocking murder at the renowned Wisconsin home he built for her, Taliesin.

Good Prose is an inspiring book about writing - about the creation of good prose - and the record of a warm and productive literary friendship. The story begins in 1973, in the offices of the Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him, and from that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize.

In 1943, eighteen-year-old Walter Stitt enlisted in the US Army, ready to serve his country. From his time in basic training at Fort Polk in Louisiana, throughout his time as a tank gunner in the 33rd Armored Regiment, to his post-injury service in England, he wrote home to the family he had left at home.

In 1991, Ioan Culianu was on the precipice of a brilliant academic career. Culianu had fled his native Romania and established himself as a widely admired scholar at just forty-one years old. He was teaching at the University of Chicago Divinity School where he was seen as the heir apparent to his mentor, Mircea Eliade, a fellow Romanian expatriate and the founding father of the field of religious studies, who had died a few years earlier.

This foreword is written by the author’s son, Peter. This is a superb collection of 48 short stories my mother wrote in her senior years. There are a few fanciful stories, but the majority are nonfiction accounts. They are accurate recollections of my mother’s young life in Hungary, growing up under German, then Russian occupation. The stories continue through the heroic and tragic Hungarian Revolution, during which my mother left the country of her birth. It was an arduous journey to finally arrive in Canada, her new home, as an immigrant with nothing but the clothes on her back. Yet, ...

Follow along with “Captain Bob” Young as he crosses the USA from Santa Monica to Connecticut and back in his two seater airplane. He visits old and new friends while searching for himself and discovering the good in us all.

A true romance memoir. "This is like drinking tea and honey on a cold day." When tragedy struck, I thought for sure that my own life was at an end. I was wrong. This is the true story of how two stray rescue cats and a woman named Kitty, whom I finally met after a wild ride of internet dating, brought love, romance, and laughter back into my life. Love was then. Love is now. Love is forever. WINNER of the 2018 Stephen Memorial Award FINALIST for the 2014 RONE AWARD If you love reading feel-good memoirs, then don't miss THE THREE KITTIES THAT SAVED MY LIFE, where "Mike Meyer pens a tender ...

The revered civil rights activist and pioneering member of Congress chronicles her groundbreaking 1972 run for President as the first woman and person of color—a work of immense historical importance that both captures and transcends its times, newly reissued to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of her campaign.

During an age of heightened religious conflict, Catherine de' Medici lived her life at the center of sixteenth-century European and French politics. Catherine de' Medici: The Life and Times of the Serpent Queen is Mary Hollingsworth's evocative, authoritative biography of the most extraordinary woman of the sixteenth-century.

As for me, if it were not for you (Papa), never would I have been to the places I have been and done the things I have done, which have shaped me into the writer, teacher, and reader I am. One might say Fiza Pathan’s father started her on a path toward books. He wanted a boy child and got a girl, and as a result, Fiza went to live with her mother and uncle at her grandmother’s house. This book of personal essays documents the relationship Fiza Pathan has had with the many libraries, secondhand bookshops, boutique bookstores, and writing haunts that have made her into the writer, ...

Where justice meets corruption—and one prosecutor stands at the crossroads. In the shadows of jazz clubs and beneath the canopy of moss-draped oaks, a far more sinister rhythm pulsed through the streets of New Orleans: the grip of organized crime. Mobster-ville Magistrate: The Story Behind the Story pulls back the curtain on a world few have truly seen—one where American Mafia influence shaped politics, police, and even the courts. This powerful nonfiction companion to the novel Magistrate in Mobster-ville reveals the true-life inspirations behind a gripping tale of legal warfare and ...

An Italian memoir. Laine gave up her job as a nurse, sold her home and gave away most of her belongings. She has three desires bubbling at the heart of her choice: to write a book, paint a picture and climb a mountain before she died. A man with a van took most of her remaining belongings, along with her basset hound Basil, down to the heel of Italy over 1,500 miles away, where she would spend the next four years. If it all seemed like a folly, then she was willing to take the risk. She moved to a house that she had only spent a week in the year before. She knew no one and yet she had ...

All In My Head is a memoir by a woman who in her early 50s received a life-shattering diagnosis. It is about her determined search for effective treatment, the birth of a campaign to get proper data and funding for research into glioblastoma (GBM), and finally her coming to terms with the knowledge that she has reached the end of the road.

Malala's memoir of a remarkable teenage girl who risked her life for the right to go to school is now abridged and adapted for chapter book listeners. Raised in a changing Pakistan by an enlightened father from a poor background and a beautiful, illiterate mother, Malala was taught to stand up for what she believes. Her story of bravery and determination in the face of extremism is more timely than ever.

Born to a wealthy family in West Africa around 1770, Omar Ibn Said was abducted and sold into slavery in the United States, where he came to the attention of a prominent North Carolina family after filling "the walls of his room with piteous petitions to be released, all written in the Arabic language," as one local newspaper reported. Ibn Said soon became a local celebrity, and in 1831 he was asked to write his life story, producing the only known surviving American slave narrative written in Arabic.

When Memoirs was first published in 1975, it created quite a bit of turbulence in the media - though long self-identified as a gay man, Williams' candor about his love life, sexual encounters, and drug use was found shocking in and of itself, and such revelations by America's greatest living playwright were called "a raw display of private life" by the New York Times Book Review. As it turns out, Williams' look back at his life is not quite so scandalous as it once seemed.

Today’s busy, noisy, and fast-paced world can be full of challenges that stress us out and bog us down, sometimes to the point of leading us down a path of despair, desolation, and depression. 'The Healing Swords of Love and Innocence: Be Brave Be Bold This Is Your Moment' is a complete guide to discovering how to slow down, reset the mind, and begin to achieve the love, innocence, peace of mind, and resilience we once enjoyed as children. Based upon the author's years and experiences as a contemplative nun, a probation officer, and a counselor, author Elizabeth Upton shows us how to ...

Self-help books: In this inspiring memoir of self-help, Brooke Howell reveals an incredible journey that impacted many lives entailing identity theft and an incredible story of resilience. Her story is a beacon of inspiration, showing how she not only survived but continues to grow despite facing permanent trauma. Through art, writing, and personal anecdotes, Howell offers poignant insights into pain, loss, and triumph over adversity. Survival book memoirs: This book is the author’s personal account of her experience overcoming identity theft and gas lighting. The author tells their story...

One of the world's most influential religious leaders shares his legacy message and spiritual memoir for the first time. Tracing his faith journey from humble beginnings on the streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina, to sharing the good news with millions and counseling world leaders, Luis' life is filled with adventure, risk, and faith. A very personal audiobook with never-before-told stories and a 16-page photo insert, Luis recounts losing his father at an early age and caring for his five siblings and his mother.