The Fall 2018 Memoir Writing workshop at the Newport Beach Public Library was another rewarding experience with local writers. Sponsored by the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation, which has helped to make the main library the
second most-visited venue in the city -- the first most-visited being the beach.
Coming Up: The next memoir workshop begins Tuesday, September 24th, 2019, and runs for six weeks, ending Tuesday, October 29th. For information on signing up, please contact the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation at www.foundation@newportbeachca.gov. Next workshop after that begins in January 2020.
Why do I appreciate the memoir form? Perhaps because I grew up with parents who held tight to their secrets in a time when people generally did not reveal the intimacies of their lives. Sensing that no one was telling me what was really going on in our family -- all the interesting stuff -- I developed a serious case of curiosity. "Don't ask so many questions," my mother would protest, but this only challenged a kid like me with an overactive imagination and curiosity. Thus my interest in personal stories.
It used to be that memoirs were written by the famous, particularly old white men, or by someone who had experienced the extraordinary: an abduction by Native Americans, the escape narrative of an African-American slave. About 40 years ago, that changed. Ordinary people as well as women and people of color began to publish their personal stories. Readers could not get enough of them. The memoir remains a highly popular literary form.
Over the past 20 years I have taught memoir writing courses for the University of California Extension at Irvine, the Blue Ribbon Schools Foundation, and the Newport Beach Public Library Foundation. I have taught at St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church and St. Mark Presbyterian Church, both of Newport Beach, California, and at a Spanish-speaking church in Cabo San Lucas, Baja California. I also work with individuals. Despite the protestations of some of my students that they've not done anything notable in their lives, I have come to understand that there is no ordinary life. Each of us has the power to bear witness to what it has taken to survive into adulthood, to struggle towards authenticity, to record the dramas of our lives. In this way not-so-ordinary people are able to make sense of their past, come to terms with their younger selves, and, in the end, gain a sense of completion and satisfaction.
In 2010, Annie Quinn, one of my students at the Newport Beach Public Library, began to share the story of a chance encounter in an Irish pub with the man who became her second husband, the class refused to let her stop. She continued and self-published her memoir, A Moment in Connemara: An Irish Love Story, in December 2012. Since then, Annie has been speaking to book clubs, authors' conferences, and community venues to share her story. www.ballycottonpress.com. In the years since several other workshop writers as well as people I've worked with privately have self-published their memoirs with beneficial results. Here below is one book cover, with more to follow.