Discover The Memoir Collection

The memoir, as Adam Gopnik writes, “has become the basic literary messenger of our era.”

Six celebrated memoirists in our archive have each shared all they’ve learned from their own writing experience — and each, in their Five Things I’ve Learned class, has shared something essential about what the form asks of every writer who attempts it.

Six classes, each two-hours in length, are now available for special purchase. You can view them all on-demand immediately, and return to them as often as you’d like.

• Kim Addonizio — poet, fiction writer, essayist and author of the memoir Bukowski in a Sundress — who shares the Five Things She’s Learned about the opportunities that personal writing offers writers and readers, and about the strategies and approaches you can use right away to tell the stories you need to tell about your own life.
• Andre Dubus III — award-winning writer,  teacher, and author of the memoirs Townie and Ghost Dogs — who shares the Five Things He’s Learned about the fluid, subjective nature of memory, and about the ways writers can genuinely share and illuminate themselves in their writing.
• Ann Hood — award-winning writer, teacher and author of the memoirs Fly Girl, Comfort: A Journey Through Grief, and Do Not Go Gentle— who shares the Five Things She’s Learned about how to bring focus to a singular slice of your life in ways that produce the story you want to read and write.
• Allison Moorer — singer, songwriter, and author of the memoirs Blood and I Dream He Talks to Me  — who shares the Five Things She’s Learned about offering her family’s stories in prose and in song, and about all that taking ownership of our most personal stories makes possible.
• Susan Orlean — acclaimed journalist and author of the memoir Joyride — who shares the Five Things She’s Learned while writing her recent memoir, and about the approaches sure to be of help as you share your own personal history.
• Matthew Specktor — novelist, cultural critic, screenwriter and author of the memoirs The Golden Hour and Always Crashing the Same Car — who shares the Five Things He’s Learned about the powerful ways that the imagination can operate in nonfiction writing, and how reality can add truth and ballast to fiction.

And Just Announced

We’re thrilled to welcome back celebrated writers Adam Gopnik and Peter Orner, beginning June 7th.

Learn more about Adam’s Five Things I’ve Learned about Writing a Memoir, happening live Sunday, June 7th; and Peter’s Five Things I’ve Learned about Messing with the Truth (In Order to Lie), live Sunday, June 14th,  at myfivethings.com.