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memoir

  • Sloane Crosley's search for truth is frank, darkly funny, and gilded with resounding empathy. Upending the "grief memoir," "Grief Is for People" is a category-defying story of the struggle to hold on to the past without being consumed by it.
  • Lucy Sante is the author of "Low Life," "Evidence," "The Factory of Facts," "Kill All Your Darlings," "Folk Photography," "The Other Paris," "Maybe the People Would Be the Times," and "Nineteen Reservoirs." Her most recent book is "I Heard Her Call My Name: A Memoir of Transition." She will participate in the Memoir-A-Go-Go! panel at this year's Woodstock Bookfest on Sunday, March 24.
  • Gerry Holzman passed away this week. He was a master wood-carver, the mastermind behind the Empire State Carousel and a dear friend. He was my neighbor for several years in Cambridge, NY and I got to watch him work, hear his stories and have the joy of being around him.Last year I spoke to him about his memoir, Wanderings of a Wayward Woodcarver. We share that interview this morning to celebrate Gerry and his incredible life.
  • Beloved actor and environmental activist Ed Begley Jr. shares hilarious and poignant stories of his improbable life in his memoir "To the Temple of Tranquility...And Step On It!." The book focusses on his relationship with his legendary father, adventures with Hollywood icons, the origins of his environmental activism, addiction and recovery, and his lifelong search for wisdom and common ground.
  • When Nina Roosevelt was just seven years old, her family moved from California to live with her grandmother at the small cottage, Val-Kill, in Hyde Park, New York. It was at Val-Kill Farm that Nina shared her childhood years with her remarkable grandmother Eleanor Roosevelt, the woman who would change her life."Growing Up Roosevelt" (SUNY Press) gives an intimate picture of life at Val-Kill as well as Nina's wide-ranging experiences traveling as a teenager with her grandmother. Included are portraits of the family, staff, famous friends, people in need, and world leaders as disparate as Nikita Khrushchev and John F. Kennedy.
  • With insight, humor, formal invention, and lyricism, in "A Man of Two Faces" Viet Thanh Nguyen rewinds the film of his own life. He expands the genre of personal memoir by acknowledging larger stories of refugeehood, colonization, and ideas about Vietnam and America, writing with his trademark sardonic wit and incisive analysis, as well as a deep emotional openness about his life as a father and a son. This interview was recorded on October 4.
  • When Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in high school, he was part of a program that sent students to be counselors at a camp for seriously ill kids and their families. Going into it, Jarrett was worried: Wouldn't it be depressing, to be around kids facing such a serious struggle? Wouldn't it be grim?But instead of the shadow of death, Jarrett found something else at Camp Sunshine: the hope and determination that gets people through the most troubled of times. Now, in his follow-up to the National Book Award finalist "Hey, Kiddo," Jarrett brings readers back to Camp Sunshine so we can meet the campers and fellow counselors who changed the course of his life.
  • "The Smile of Her" is a world premiere play written and performed by Academy, Emmy and Golden Globe Awards winner Christine Lahti. The play, running through July 29 at BTG’s Unicorn Theatre in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, takes the audience on a sometimes funny, always deeply personal, journey of denial, neglect, abuse, understanding and by the end: hope.
  • Academy and Tony Award-winning actor, Alan Arkin, has died at 89. Joe Donahue spoke with him on The Roundtable in 2011 about the memoir "An Improvised Life." In this wide-ranging interview Arkin recalls his time at Second City, his aversion to being typecast, and how winning the Oscar didn't change his career.
  • When Jarrett J. Krosoczka was in high school, he was part of a program that sent students to be counselors at a camp for seriously ill kids and their families. Going into it, Jarrett was worried: Wouldn't it be depressing, to be around kids facing such a serious struggle? Wouldn't it be grim?But instead of the shadow of death, Jarrett found something else at Camp Sunshine: the hope and determination that gets people through the most troubled of times. Now, in his follow-up to the National Book Award finalist "Hey, Kiddo," Jarrett brings readers back to Camp Sunshine so we can meet the campers and fellow counselors who changed the course of his life.