4.0
The Autobiographer's Handbook
ByPublisher Description
In
, you're invited to a roundtable discussion with today's most successful memoirists. Let Nick Hornby show you how the banal can be brilliant. Elizabeth Gilbert will teach you to turn pain into prose. Want to beat procrastination? Steve Almond has the answer. Learn about memory triggers (Ishmael Beah: music) and warm-up exercises (Jonathan Ames: internet backgammon). These writers may not always agree (on research: Tobias Wolff, yes, Frank McCourt, no) but whether you're a blossoming writer or a veteran wordsmith, this unprecedennted wealth of knowledge will help anyone who's ever dreamed of putting their story on paper, on writing themselves into existence.
Featuring: Steve Almond • Jonathan Ames • Ishmael Beah • Elizabeth Gilbert • Nick Hornby • A. J. Jacobs • Maxine Hong Kingston • Phillip Lopate • Frank Mccourt • David Rakoff • Esmeralda Santiago • Julia Scheeres • Art Spiegelman • Anthony Swofford • Sarah Vowell • Sean Wilsey • Tobias Wolff • and many more
"Should prove useful, informative and motivating for writers at just about any level." —
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesThe Autobiographer's Handbook Reviews
4.0
annmariereads
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Mandee Seeley
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“the title pretty much says it all. for real. it's pretty straightforward. 826 is some weird writing thingamajig that dave eggers started, & kudos to him for doing that--i hate everything he has ever written & i'm no fan of "mcsweeney's" either, so i'm glad he is doing something useful with all the prestige & possible money he makes off his writing. i guess it mostly has programs for young writers (like high schoolers), teaching them how to be better writers & break into publishing & stuff. that's cool. it would have been nice if there was such a dedicated program like that when i was a teenager. i guess they also have some programs for adults, including a very popular memoir-writing program, since memoirs are hot hot hot right now! i read this not because i want to write my own memoir...after all, i'm only 29 & the last few years have been a little slow. i don't kid myself into thinking i am great memoir fodder. no, i read this in the hopes that i could adapt some memoir-writing ideas into zine-writing. after all, both mediums contain elements of creative non-fiction, right? & in that respect, this book was kind of helpful. better than that, it was much more entertaining than i had expected. it's broken down into sections, from how to start writing to how to address writing about real people that might not want to be written about to how to structure your memoir to how you know you're done writing your memoir, etc etc etc, & it's all told in the form of quotes from different memoirists of many genres offering their two cents on the topic at hand. frank mccourt is not real helpful. he's all, "i sat down to write & out came one bestselling masterpiece after another. who knows how i do it? the important thing is that if i can do it, so can you." um, not really, frank, but thanks for the vote of confidence. elizabeth gilbert was the most verbose & new age hand-holdy-y. she totally would decide to go travel around india & italy & who knows where else after getting divorced. she's just that type, you know? i bet she also wears shawls a lot. hand-woven shawls, bought from peasants somewhere. still, interesting book.”
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