A series of excerpts from my memoir, In the Shadow of the Valley, as I share some of my favorite snippets.
From the Prologue, and shared with permission:
Life was different in our holler, I came to learn. And we were definitely living in a holler, not a hollow like…
The Appalachians are among the oldest mountains on Earth, born of powerful upheavals within the terrestrial crust and sculpted by the ceaseless action of water upon the surface. — Encyclopedia Britannica
Those mountains still stand, mostly intact, though smaller now than they must have been in the Precambrian era, or…
The directive to “kill your darlings” is one of the most challenging and valuable practices we can employ as writers. But how do we pick those darlings? And if those passages are so dear to us, how can they truly be worthy of deletion?
There are some things you should understand about this man, the man who fathered me:
He looks like almost every other baby ever born: red-faced, hairless, eyes closed. His cries pierce the quiet country desolation and scatter among the last brittle oak leaves of winter. Spring is coming.
Middle child…
I wrote a good portion of my memoir in a stream-of-consciousness outpouring, which was a satisfying way to externalize the vivid memories (so many memories!) I carried from childhood. At first, I sought only to tell a good story, which I still value above all else. However, aside from committed…
Lots of people have an important story to tell, and in recent years, memoirs have evolved to tell true stories in creative new ways. Take, for example, Thi Bui’s acclaimed graphic novel memoir The Best We Could Do, which she illustrated herself.
Whether your memoir is a genre-bending form like…
“I didn’t know why I wanted to protect my brother, and why no one could protect me. I didn’t understand what happens to people when they are just trying to survive. I couldn’t have told you that, as a girl, I felt like I had a duty to my family…
A little over twenty years ago, I met a young woman from Florida who was traveling with a group of hippies. Like most of the traveling hippies I met back then, she had a hippie nickname: Pixie. I was a college student and loved meeting people like Pixie, though I…
