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The Art of Cathartic Memoir

Author : Krista Burlae

Publisher : Balboa Press

Page : 114 pages

File Size : 29,73 MB

Release : 2013-05-02

Category : Drama

ISBN : 1452570140

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Book Description

For countless years, emotional pain has been a catalyst for creation. Musicians and mystics, artists and authors have transformed personal tragedy into works of sublime beautyand in doing so, often found inner peace. The Art of Cathartic Memoir explicitly shows writers how to recast their experiences into art while encouraging them to find such inner peace. It offers exercises, structure, and inspiration based on a wide range of literary, psychological, and spiritual sources. Drawing upon the ideas of Carolyn Myss, St. John of the Cross, and many others, The Art of Cathartic Memoir supports writers in constructing their life stories in a mystical yet artful way. Whether writing a full-length book or a shorter piece of memoir, The Art of Cathartic Memoir facilitates transformation on many levels and speaks to writers, why they need to create, what keeps them from it, and how to overcome resistance. Krista has been a friend and trusted editor for several years. She has worked with me and my brother on a manuscript authored by our deceased father. As a skilled writer, Krista quickly identified and sensitively corrected the technical and grammatical issues involved in dealing with a non-native English speaker. More importantly, she readily grasped the meaning and intent of what was written. She was able to delve into what our father was thinking and his motivation as he wrote particular passages and recalled specific scenes. A. Zygielbaum, Lincoln, Nebraska Kristas workshop and gentle facilitation enabled even the beginning writer to tap into skills never before realized. Her workshop gave me permission to play with words in my head and allow those words to dance on paper. D. Brown, Lincoln, Nebraska



The Art of Memoir

Author : Mary Karr

Publisher : HarperCollins

Page : 256 pages

File Size : 41,42 MB

Release : 2015-09-15

Category : Language Arts & Disciplines

ISBN : 0062223089

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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.



The Erratics

Author : Vicki Laveau-Harvie

Publisher : Knopf

Page : 164 pages

File Size : 48,5 MB

Release : 2020-08-25

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 0525658629

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Book Description

Two sisters reckon with their toxic parents through the decline and death of their outlandishly tyrannical mother and with the care of their psychologically terrorized father, all relayed with dark humor and brutal honesty in this award-winning “brilliantly-written memoir... [that] reads like a novel” (best-selling author Margaret Atwood via Twitter). When her elderly mother is hospitalized unexpectedly, Vicki Laveau-Harvie and her sister travel to their parents' ranch home in Alberta, Canada, to help their father. Estranged from their parents for many years, they are horrified by what they discover on their arrival. For years their mother has camouflaged her manic delusions and savage unpredictability, and over the decades she has managed to shut herself and her husband away from the outside world, systematically starving him and making him a virtual prisoner in his own home. Rearranging their lives to be the daughters they were never allowed to be, the sisters focus their efforts on helping their father cope with the unending manipulations of their mother and encounter all the pressures that come with caring for elderly parents. And at every step they have to contend with their mother, whose favorite phrase during their childhood was: "I'll get you and you won't even know I'm doing it." Set against the natural world of the Canadian foothills ("in winter the cold will kill you, nothing personal"), this memoir—at once dark and hopeful—shatters precedents about grief, anger, and family trauma with surprising tenderness and humor.



Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls

Author : T Kira Madden

Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Page : 252 pages

File Size : 11,76 MB

Release : 2019-03-05

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 1635571863

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Book Description

“The book I wish I'd had growing up.” -Chanel Miller, author of Know My Name Best Books of 2019: Esquire O, The Oprah Magazine Variety Lit Hub Book Riot Electric Literature Autostraddle Finalist: NBCC John Leonard First Book Prize Lambda Literary Award New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Selection Paste Best Memoirs of the Decade Elle Best Books of the Season Washington Post Best Books of the Month Indie Next Pick Indies Introduce Pick "A fearless debut." -New York Times "[A] gorgeous reckoning." -Washington Post "Flat out breathtaking." -Lit Hub "Gripping and gloriously written." -Elle "Utterly unforgettable." -NYLON "Unnervingly satisfying." -Oprah Magazine "Deeply compassionate." -NPR.org "Truly stunning." -Cosmopolitan Acclaimed literary essayist T Kira Madden's raw and redemptive debut memoir is about coming of age and reckoning with desire as a queer, biracial teenager amidst the fierce contradictions of Boca Raton, Florida, a place where she found cult-like privilege, shocking racial disparities, rampant white-collar crime, and powerfully destructive standards of beauty hiding in plain sight. As a child, Madden lived a life of extravagance, from her exclusive private school to her equestrian trophies and designer shoe-brand name. But under the surface was a wild instability. The only child of parents continually battling drug and alcohol addictions, Madden confronted her environment alone. Facing a culture of assault and objectification, she found lifelines in the desperately loving friendships of fatherless girls. With unflinching honesty and lyrical prose, spanning from 1960s Hawai'i to the present-day struggle of a young woman mourning the loss of a father while unearthing truths that reframe her reality, Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls is equal parts eulogy and love letter. It's a story about trauma and forgiveness, about families of blood and affinity, both lost and found, unmade and rebuilt, crooked and beautiful. One of the Most Anticipated Books of the Year: Entertainment Weekly, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, The Millions, Nylon, The Rumpus, Electric Literature, Lit Hub, Refinery29, and many more



The Memoir Project

Author : Marion Roach Smith

Publisher : Grand Central Publishing

Page : 140 pages

File Size : 20,44 MB

Release : 2011-06-09

Category : Self-Help

ISBN : 1455501824

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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.



Painted in Words

Author : Samuel S Bak

Publisher : Indiana University Press

Page : 498 pages

File Size : 43,60 MB

Release : 2001-09-27

Category : Art

ISBN : 0253010136

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Book Description

At my first sight of a painting by Samuel Bak, I had the keen sense that he was telling me stories with his brush. Now that at long last he has written this book, I find it no wonder that he has painted with his pen.... Among the tens and hundreds of books I have read about the pre-Shoah and post-Shoah period... Bak’s book is unique. Despite being suffused with a sense of loss, horror, degradation, and death, it is ultimately a sanguine, funny book, full of the love of life, rocking with an almost cathartic joy. At times I found myself bursting out laughing... a marvelous ode, a colorful hymn to the forces of life, love, creation, and the joys of the senses. —From the Foreword by Amos Oz In Painted in Words internationally renowned artist Samuel Bak sets aside his brushes to narrate the stories of his life—as a child in Nazi-occupied Vilna, as a youth in European refugee camps, and as a maturing artist in Israel, France, Italy, Switzerland, and the United States. With gentle humor, the child prodigy of the faraway past and the accomplished artist of today engage in a spirited dialogue from which emerges a self-portrait of "The Artist as a Young—and middle-aged and aging—Survivor." The brilliance, vision, and virtuosity that Bak brings to his painting are equally in evidence in his writing. This deeply touching work is an important contribution to Holocaust literature and art history.



How To Write An Autobiographical Novel

Author : Alexander Chee

Publisher : HarperCollins

Page : 297 pages

File Size : 10,95 MB

Release : 2018-04-17

Category : Literary Collections

ISBN : 1328764419

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Book Description

Named a Best Book of 2018 by New York Magazine, the Washington Post, Publisher's Weekly, NPR, and Time, among many others, this essay collection from the author of The Queen of the Night explores how we form identities in life and in art. As a novelist, Alexander Chee has been described as “masterful” by Roxane Gay, “incendiary” by the New York Times, and "brilliant" by the Washington Post. With his first collection of nonfiction, he’s sure to secure his place as one of the finest essayists of his generation as well. How to Write an Autobiographical Novel is the author’s manifesto on the entangling of life, literature, and politics, and how the lessons learned from a life spent reading and writing fiction have changed him. In these essays, he grows from student to teacher, reader to writer, and reckons with his identities as a son, a gay man, a Korean American, an artist, an activist, a lover, and a friend. He examines some of the most formative experiences of his life and the nation’s history, including his father’s death, the AIDS crisis, 9/11, the jobs that supported his writing ​— ​Tarot-reading, bookselling, cater-waiting for William F. Buckley ​— ​the writing of his first novel, Edinburgh, and the election of Donald Trump. By turns commanding, heartbreaking, and wry, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel asks questions about how we create ourselves in life and in art, and how to fight when our dearest truths are under attack. Named a Best Book by: Time, Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Wired, Esquire, Buzzfeed, New York Public Library, Boston Globe, Paris Review, Mother Jones,The A.V. Club, Out Magazine, Book Riot, Electric Literature, PopSugar, The Rumpus, My Republica, Paste, Bitch, Library Journal, Flavorwire, Bustle, Christian Science Monitor, Shelf Awareness, Tor.com, Entertainment Cheat Sheet, Roads and Kingdoms, Chicago Public Library, Hyphen Magazine, Entropy Magazine, Chicago Review of Books, The Coil, iBooks, and Washington Independent Review of Books Winner of the Publishing Triangle's Randy Shilts Award for Gay Nonfiction * Recipient of the Lambda Literary Trustees' Award * Finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay * Finalist for a Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir/Biography



Numb to This

Author : Kindra Neely

Publisher : Little, Brown Ink

Page : 307 pages

File Size : 31,36 MB

Release : 2022-10-11

Category : Young Adult Nonfiction

ISBN : 0316462071

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Book Description

This searing graphic memoir portrays the impact of gun violence through a fresh lens with urgency, humanity, and a very personal hope. Kindra Neely never expected it to happen to her. No one does. Sure, she’d sometimes been close to gun violence, like when the house down the street from her childhood home in Texas was targeted in a drive-by shooting. But now she lived in Oregon, where she spent her time swimming in rivers with friends or attending classes at the bucolic Umpqua Community College. And then, one day, it happend: a mass shooting shattered her college campus. Over the span of a few minutes, on October 1, 2015, eight students and a professor lost their lives. And suddenly, Kindra became a survivor. This empathetic and ultimately hopeful graphic memoir recounts Kindra’s journey forward from those few minutes that changed everything. It wasn’t easy. Every time Kindra took a step toward peace and wholeness, a new mass shooting devastated her again. Las Vegas. Parkland. She was hopeless at times, feeling as if no one was listening. Not even at the worldwide demonstration March for Our Lives. But finally, Kindra learned that—for her—the path toward hope wound through art, helping others, and sharing her story.



Empty

Author : Susan Burton

Publisher : Random House Trade Paperbacks

Page : 321 pages

File Size : 32,11 MB

Release : 2021-07-06

Category : Biography & Autobiography

ISBN : 081298272X

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Book Description

An editor at This American Life reveals the searing story of the secret binge-eating that dominated her adolescence and shapes her still. “Her tale of compulsion and healing is candid and powerful.”—People NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MARIE CLAIRE For almost thirty years, Susan Burton hid her obsession with food and the secret life of compulsive eating and starving that dominated her adolescence. This is the relentlessly honest, fiercely intelligent story of living with both anorexia and binge-eating disorder, moving past her shame, and learning to tell her secret. When Burton was thirteen, her stable life in suburban Michigan was turned upside down by her parents’ abrupt divorce, and she moved to Colorado with her mother and sister. She seized on this move west as an adventure and an opportunity to reinvent herself from middle-school nerd to popular teenage girl. But in the fallout from her parents’ breakup, an inherited fixation on thinness went from “peculiarity to pathology.” Susan entered into a painful cycle of anorexia and binge eating that formed a subterranean layer to her sunny life. She went from success to success—she went to Yale, scored a dream job at a magazine right out of college, and married her college boyfriend. But in college the compulsive eating got worse—she’d binge, swear it would be the last time, and then, hours later, do it again—and after she graduated she descended into anorexia, her attempt to “quit food.” Binge eating is more prevalent than anorexia or bulimia, but there is less research and little storytelling to help us understand it. In tart, soulful prose Susan Burton strikes a blow for the importance of this kind of narrative and tells an exhilarating story of longing, compulsion and hard-earned self-revelation.



Chartwell Manor

Author : Glenn Head

Publisher : Fantagraphics Books

Page : 246 pages

File Size : 13,60 MB

Release : 2021-05-25

Category : Comics & Graphic Novels

ISBN : 168396425X

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Book Description

No one asks for the childhood they get, and no child ever deserved to go to Chartwell Manor. For Glenn Head, his two years spent at the now-defunct Mendham, NJ, boarding school ― run by a serial sexual and emotional abuser of young boys in the early 1970s ― left emotional scars in ways that he continues to process. This graphic memoir ― a book almost 50 years in the making ― tells the story of that experience, and then delves with even greater detail into the reverberations of that experience in adulthood, including addiction and other self-destructive behavior. Head tells his story with unsparing honesty, depicting himself as a deeply flawed human struggling to make sense of the childhood he was given.