An IN-PERSON Panel Presentation
Writers have their choice of genres to write in—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, biography, autobiography, memoir….so why choose memoir?
A truly good memoir is more like a series of Polaroid snapshots, highlighting the key moments or a specific time period in a person’s life that deliver answer a question or deliver a breakthrough.
In this panel, renowned memoirists Mira Ptacin, Sandell Morse, Rachael Cerroti, and Phuc Tran discuss why memoir, how to write one that is compelling and truthful, how to be vulnerable, the skills essential to great memoir and literary writing—scene, characterization, dialogue, and point of view—how to delve into the following questions: What does this life illustrate? What has the narrator learned from his or her life? What larger issues are being explored? Panelists will also consider the balance between truth and subjectivity, and how to turn personal truth into universal truths and tell a unique story that creates empathy in the reader.
+ PLEASE NOTE This talk will occur in person at USM Glickman Library in Portland, Maine. The week of the event, participants will receive an email telling them the exact location in the Library.
Mira Ptacin is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir Poor Your Soul (Soho Press 2016), chosen by Kirkus as one of the best memoirs of the year for 2017 and winner of the 2017 Maine Literary Award for Memoir and author of the nonfiction work The In-Betweens (2015). Her work has been published in New York Magazine, Guernica, Tin House, LitHub, NPR, Vice, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, Poets & Writers, and more. Formerly an instructor at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies, Ptacin lives on Peaks Island with her family.. VISIT miraMptacin.com
Rachael Cerrotti is the author of We Share The Same Sky: A Memoir of Memory and Migration. The book received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly, was the winner of the 2022 Maine Literary Award in memoir and shortlisted for the 2022 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing. The book follows her narrative podcast, also titled We Share The Same Sky, which was the listed as one of the best podcasts of 2019 by HuffPost, a runner up in the prose category for the Miller Audio Prize, chosen as a Reader’s Pick by Vulture Magazine and as a “Show We Love” by Apple Podcasts. We Share The Same Sky (the podcast and book) are now being taught in classrooms around the world and is being adapted for a traveling museum exhibit. Rachael’s work combines photos, video, audio, primary source documents and of course the written word to tell true stories that often explore the humanity of grief and how stories are passed from one generation to the next. She is currently the Inaugural Storyteller in Residence for USC Shoah Foundation and produces/hosts The Memory Generation podcast. She lives in Portland.
Phuc Tran’s acclaimed memoir, SIGH, GONE: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and The Fight To Fit In, received the 2020 New England Book Award for Nonfiction and the 2021 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. SIGH, GONE was named a best book of 2020 by Amazon, Audible, Kirkus Reviews, and many other publications.
Sandell Morse is the prize-winning author of the memoir, The Spiral Shell, A French Village Reveals Its Secrets of Jewish Resistance in World War II. Morse’s nonfiction has been noted in The Best American Essays series and published in Creative Nonfiction, Ploughshares, the New England Review, Fourth Genre ASCENT, Solstice, and Tiferet among others. The Spiral Shell is a Silver Medal winner in the Story Circle Women’s Book Awards, 2020 and a Finalist for the New Hampshire Literary Awards, 2021.
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