Saturday, February 14, 2009

Thoughts from the memoir festival

All of the panelists were very different in their life experience and this was made evident by their participation in the panel discussion.

A few insights that I gleaned from some of the panelists;

Fred Poole- Few people know their story till they begin to write it.

Martha Frankle- What’s off limits? It’s all fair game.

Abigail Thomas- What story are you going to tell? Feed it what it wants.
Memoir is about clarity, not about sticking it to someone. You figure out what you have been trying to not know.

Abigail Thomas - Go thru it and come out the other side.

Janine Pomey Vega- Pursue the truth in the essence of the character

Malachy McCourt- It’s best not to hurt people with your writing, make amends.

Malachy McCourt closed a very fine evening with “Let’s have a song”
and proceeded to lead the attendees in an impromptu Irish song.

The other panelists had insightful offerings, they just did not strike a tone in my heart at the moment.

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