Baring the Truth in Your Memoir
When you write a memoir or personal essay, you dare to reveal the truths
of your experience: about yourself, and about others in your life. How
do you expose long-guarded secrets and discuss bad behavior? How do you
gracefully portray your family members, friends, spouses, exes, and
children without damaging your relationships? How do you balance your
respect for others with your desire to tell the truth?
In The Truth of Memoir, best-selling memoirist Kerry Cohen provides
insight and guidelines for depicting the characters who appear in your
work with honesty and compassion. You'll learn how to choose which
details to include and which secrets to tell, how to render the people
in your life artfully and fully on the page, and what reactions you can
expect from those you include in your work--as well as from readers and
the media.
Featuring over twenty candid essays from memoirists sharing their
experiences and advice, as well as exercises for writing about others in
your memoirs and essays, The Truth of Memoir will give you the courage
and confidence to write your story--and all of its requisite
characters--with truth and grace.
Kerry Cohen's The Truth of Memoir is a smart, soulful, psychologically
astute guide to first-person writing. She reveals everything you want to
know--but were afraid to ask--about telling your life story. --Susan
Shapiro, author of eight books including Only As Good as Your Word,
and co-author of The Bosnia List
