Community
Memoir
Project
A story is the shortest distance between two people
Bringing free
memoir-writing workshops
to public libraries
&
publishing neighborhood stories
The Community Memoir Project leads free memoir-writing workshops in public libraries, and collects the writing into print and digital anthologies. These books are written portraits of the neighborhoods, full of a diversity of voices and experiences.
This is what American history and culture look like from the ground up. This is how the personal becomes universal.
The workshops have produced some 90 autobiographical stories collected in 4 books:We Are Here; No Place Like It; Subject to Change; and Red Skirt, Blue Jeans.
Read digital versions of the first 3 books here. The stories are about moments both minute & momentous:
Stealing candy bars from the boarders in a Baltimore home;
Growing up in a Berkeley motel;
Coming home to segregated Texas after serving in WW II;
Moving inland to avoid California's Japanese-American internment camps
Follow along with the workshops;
Try out the writing exercises
Read in-progress stories;
See what participants say about the experience of writing personal stories in a group setting.