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Memoirs

Kathleen Hill’s Favorite Memoirs To Help Get You Through the Last Days of Our Writing Contest

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Inspired by an interview and memoir written by Kathleen Hill, BookTrib is hosting our first writing contest where anyone with a story to tell can write  for a chance to be a 2018 BookTrib Contributor.  Hill, who is also a professor of writing at Sarah Lawrence College will be judging the contest  along with Walt Gragg, author of The Red Line, and James R. Hannibal, author of The Fourth Ruby. We know many of you are looking forward to entering your work an need inspiration, but others, still, just want a list of recommended memoir to add to your collection. Here, we can oblige everyone with a list of suggested memoirs from Hill’s own personal collection along with her observations and recollections. Autobiography of…

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A Year of Memories: 15 New Memoirs We Can’t Wait to Read This Year

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What makes for a good memoir? That depends on who you ask. We think it is a mix of those life lessons that we can’t get anywhere else and the original stories and unforgettable stories that make memoirs special and relatable. BookTrib’s memoir writing contest ends this week and we thought it would be a good idea to share with our readers some of the memoirs we look forward to reading this year! Here’s a list of the 15 most anticipated memoir we will be adding to our bookshelves this year. The Line Becomes a River, Francisco Cantu Francisco Cantú recounts his life on the Mexican border. From his childhood in the Southwest to his adult career as a Border…

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Tragic, Praiseworthy and Monumental: Review of Tara Westover’s ‘Educated’

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Tara Westover’s coming-of-age story in her memoir Educated, is incredible, tragic, praiseworthy and monumental.  From a young girl loving and believing everything her parents tell her, to questioning their logic and actively pursuing different answers and other ways of thinking, Westover has always had the inherent desire to know more. Reminiscent of Jeanette Walls’s The Glass Castle, Tara lives with her survivalist family in the mountains of Idaho, and similar to Leah Remini’s account of her time as a scientologist in Troublemaker, she begins to realize that everything she has been told may not be the truth, and though fiercely loyal to her parents and siblings, she feels trapped and begins to question their unconventional way of life. Growing up working in a…

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‘Each Life Can Teach Us’: Bestselling Author Steven Gaines on Memoir Writing

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Why are so many people writing memoirs? Expiation? Ego? Money? Revenge?  One reason is that access to social media has given the average citizen the misimpression that people care what they had for lunch. Andy Warhol was wrong when he said in the future everybody was going to be famous for 15 minutes. The future is here, and everybody is famous for 15 seconds, the length of time it takes to write a 140 character Tweet, or to post a vacation photo on Instagram, or catalog moods, movie reviews, and bad affairs on Facebook. The ease of publishing Print on Demand books, and ebooks, has given all of us a shot at being Proust.    A while ago I rang…

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Get Ready. Get Set. Get Published. BookTrib’s FIRST Writing Contest!

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Looking for a way to get your writing career off the ground? Let us help you launch it! Here’s a great opportunity for anyone who considered a career as a writer to be published! Our inaugural memoir writing contest is your chance to compete for a  gig as a BookTrib Contributor. Inspired by Kathleen Hill’s memoir, She Read to Us in the Late Afternoons: A Life in Novels, the writing contest is a chance for you to show us how books have made your life special! We are looking, specifically, for narratives in the style of Hill’s book that connect recollections of life events to a specific book that invokes a memory. Writers should submit clear, eloquent, creative work of no more…

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A Life in Books: Author Kathleen Hill Talks About the Power of Words and Writing Her New Book

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Before I spoke with Kathleen Hill for the first time, I had been talking with a friend about aging and watching the adults in our lives, some who’ve passed away, struggle with memory in their later years. We were both saying how we wished they had written down some of the stories of their lives, memories of events that would have given us and our children a bit more insight into family histories and reveal how certain events in the lives of those who are connected to our pasts ultimately impact who we are in the present. So we both committed to writing our own memoirs. I became keenly aware, early in the process, that everything I wrote was linked…

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Bruce Springsteen, Carrie Fisher, Reality Stars and More:  50+ Memoir Deals for Under $16 

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Are you interested in reading about how some of your favorite actors and musicians became famous? Or maybe you want to know what it’s like to grow up in the White House. Whatever your interest, there is definitely a personal story here that will not only be worth your dollar, they may even inspire you to write your own! Here’s a great list of over 50 memoirs for Kindle, all under $16 (and some are even free)!   Famous Icons Born to Run, Bruce Springsteen Becoming Grandma, Lesley Stahl Turning the Tables, Teresa Giudice The Princess Diarist, Carrie Fisher The Heroin Diaries, Nikki Sixx Unqualified, Anna Faris Growing Up Fisher, Joely Fisher Whoa, Baby!, Kelly Rowland We’re Going to Need…

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Can’t Get Enough of the Big News? Here Are Some More Royal Reads!

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From now until the big day next spring, we look forward to all the updates on wedding details and invitation lists for the British royal family when Prince Harry Weds Meghan Markle! Because we’re obsessed with royalty (The Princess Diaries is a big subject of discussion in the office today), we thought we’d bring you a special list of books on royal families all over the world and some families whose names are like royalty. Learn about the royals of Monaco, Jordan, and more. Become immersed in the world of royalty… if only for a little while: Diana: Her True Story – in Her Own Words, Andrew Morton What list on royalty wouldn’t start out with Princess Diana? She captured the hearts and…

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Ron Chernow Shares Insight on his Newest Novel, ‘Grant’

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Just the Right Book! Podcast, hosted by Roxanne Coady of Connecticut’s acclaimed, award-winning, independent bookseller R.J. Julia, is now available on BookTrib.com, the premier website where readers meet writers. The podcast and BookTrib are both dedicated to helping readers find their next favorite read and this pairing will open up a world of great possibilities. In this week’s episode of Just the Right Book! podcast, Roxanne Coady joins author Ron Chernow to talk about his latest expository biography on Ulysses S. Grant. Just who is Ron Chernow? He is the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer, historian, and journalist who wrote the biography that became the inspiration behind the record-breaking, hip-hop Broadway musical Hamilton.  In Chernow’s newest novel Grant, he paints the former president as a flawed…

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Could These Four Memoirs be the Next ‘The Glass Castle’?

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It’s rare for a book to hit the New York Times bestseller’s list at all, let alone spend seven years on it. But that’s exactly what happened with Jeannette Walls’ acclaimed memoir, The Glass Castle. Published in 2005, the book was an immediate hit, going on to sell almost 3 million copies, win several prizes, and be translated into 22 different languages. Now, twelve years after its publication, the sensational true story has been turned into a movie starring Brie Larson and Woody Harrelson, which came out August 11th. Telling the story of Walls’ abusive, poverty-stricken childhood, The Glass Castle is the kind of memoir that stays with you long after you read it. Walls’ father, Rex, is an alcoholic who…

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Video: Interview with Gary Vikan and Sacred and Stolen: Confessions of a Museum Director

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Sacred and Stolen is the memoir of an art museum director with the courage to reveal what goes on behind the scenes. It lays bare the messy part of museums: looted antiquities, crooked dealers, deluded collectors, duplicitous public officials, fakes, inside thefts, bribery, and failed exhibitions. These back stories, at once shocking and comical, reveal a man with a taste for adventure, an eagerness to fan the flames of excitement, and comfort with the chaos that often ensued. This is also the story of a Minnesota kid who started out as a printer’s devil in his father’s small-town newspaper and ended up as the director of a the Walters, a gem of an art museum in Baltimore. Of his quest…

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Smart Reads: 6 Memoirs That Examine the Author’s Own History

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We love history here at BookTrib, which is why we featured 5 Fascinating Books that Shed a Fresh Light on History in February. But when we sat down to plan our Women’s History Month Smart Reads, we decided to take a slightly different angle. We wanted to feature women who are telling contemporary stories about their own lives. So here are six memoirs that explore family dynamics, grief and loss, redemption, reinvention, violence and peace, and that enduring thing called love. Red Eggs and Good Luck: A Memoir by Angela Lam (She Writes Press; October 6, 2015) “Red Eggs and Good Luck is the kind of honest, beautifully written memoir that will have you staying up way too late turning…

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Featured Giveaways

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52 Little Lessons from a Christmas Carol Gold Medallion Award-winner BOB WELCH crafts 52 nuggets of Bible-based wisdom from one of the most popular novels of all time, A Christmas Carol. ‘For it is good to be children sometimes, and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself.’ ‘No space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused.’ ‘God bless us, every one.’ The lessons and stories from the beloved novel A Christmas Carol point to bedrock values we all share. Award-winning author Bob Welch takes readers deeper into the nuances of this classic by Charles Dickens. From the miserliness of Scrooge to the innocence of Tiny Tim, 52 Little Lessons from A…

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Holiday HAUL-A-DAY 4: “Biographies”

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Enjoy diving into biographies? Whether it is a notable memoir or a true crime story, entering in this holiday giveaway could you give the chance to read four biographies, all with different stories to tell. Intentional Living: Choosing a Life That Matters By John C. Maxwell Hunting Season: James Foley, ISIS, and the Kidnapping Campaign That Started a War by James Harkin Berlusconi: The Epic Story of the Billionaire Who Took Over Italy By Alan Friedman He Killed Them All: Robert Durst and My Quest for Justice By Jeanine Pirro

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Video: Missed It? Interview with Shaghayegh Farsijani, Author of The Burden of My Red Lips in Tehran

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Watch a continuation of our #BTLiveChat with Shaghayegh:  Can she survive reverse culture shock? Seventeen-year-old Delkash is the quintessential care-free American girl who loves life, her close knit family, and most importantly, her quirky Brooklyn neighborhood. Her days are spent outside, gliding through the sun soaked boulevards of the city, taking in the magical sights, smells and experiences of a place full of hope and most importantly freedom. But when her father makes the unilateral decision to uproot the family, Delkash is forced out of her comfort zone and into a foreign world full of mystery and intrigue — Tehran, Iran. Shell-shocked by the jaw-dropping differences between Tehran and Brooklyn, Delkash has no choice but to shut herself off from her surroundings.…

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Cooking Up the Best Writing on Food

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When you think about it, good writing is a lot like good cooking. An effective author has to prepare the correct mix of words, sentences and paragraphs spiced with just the right adjectives, adverbs and punctuation marks to make the brew go down best for readers. If you’re a foodie who loves to write, then Dianne Jacob’s Will Write For Food (Lifelong Books 3rd Edition, July 2015) is a treasure trove of practical tips and techniques for those looking to thrive and survive in the food writing arena. Jacob has a wealth of knowledge in the field as a popular speaker at food writing conferences and workshops around the globe. She also happens to teach food writing courses. The classroom…

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