In 1955, Maxine Kumin submitted a poem to the Saturday Evening Post. “Lines on a Half-Painted House” made it into the magazine—but not before Kumin was asked to produce, via her husband’s employer, verification that the poem was her original work. Kumin, who went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, was part of a groundbreaking generation of women writers who came of age during the midcentury feminist movement. By challenging the status quo and ultimately finding success for themselves, they paved the way for future generations of writers. In A Story Larger than My Own, Janet Burroway brings together Kumin, Julia Alvarez, Jane Smiley, Erica Jong, and fifteen other accomplished women of this generation to reflect on their writing lives. The essays and poems featured in this collection illustrate that even writers who achieve critical and commercial success experience a familiar pattern of highs and lows over the course of their careers. Along with success comes the pressure to sustain it, as well as a constant search for subject matter, all too frequent crises of confidence, the challenges of a changing publishing scene, and the difficulty of combining writing with the ordinary stuff of life—family, marriage, jobs. The contributors, all now over the age of sixty, also confront the effects of aging, with its paradoxical duality of new limitations and newfound freedom. Taken together, these stories offer advice from experience to writers at all stages of their careers and serve as a collective memoir of a truly remarkable generation of women.

A guide to the art of personal writing, by the author of Fierce Attachments and The End of the Novel of Love All narrative writing must pull from the raw material of life a tale that will shape experience, transform event, deliver a bit of wisdom. In a story or a novel the "I" who tells this tale can be, and often is, an unreliable narrator but in nonfiction the reader must always be persuaded that the narrator is speaking truth. How does one pull from one's own boring, agitated self the truth-speaker who will tell the story a personal narrative needs to tell? That is the question The Situation and the Story asks--and answers. Taking us on a reading tour of some of the best memoirs and essays of the past hundred years, Gornick traces the changing idea of self that has dominated the century, and demonstrates the enduring truth-speaker to be found in the work of writers as diverse as Edmund Gosse, Joan Didion, Oscar Wilde, James Baldwin, or Marguerite Duras. This book, which grew out of fifteen years teaching in MFA programs, is itself a model of the lucid intelligence that has made Gornick one of our most admired writers of nonfiction. In it, she teaches us to write by teaching us how to read: how to recognize truth when we hear it in the writing of others and in our own.

This volume is in many ways Roosevelt's political autobiography. It permits Roosevelt, in his own words, to tell what he intended to do and what he tried to do as a political leader. It differs sharply from a memoir in that it explains why Roosevelt acted without offering justification or explanation. Donald Day chooses passages that reveal all Roosevelt's dimensions - his humor, personal magnetism, and his insights into the outlook of the American people.Each document reveals a stage in Roosevelt's thinking and at the same time provides the flavor of his personality. The chapters trace his development as a social and political thinker, and also as a unique personality. This unique autobiography begins on ""a very hot Saturday morning in 1910 at the policeman's picnic in Fairview when ‘I started to make the acquaintance of that part of Dutchess County that lays outside of the town of Hyde Park. …On that joyous occasion of clams and sauerkraut and real beer I made my first speech, and I have been apologizing for it ever since.""The book carries the reader through the highlights of Roosevelt's American domestic policies, foreign dangers, and his personal reflections on the best course of action in each moment of his presidency. The book ends with the last words Roosevelt ever wrote, when he was working on an address to have been delivered on Jefferson Day: ""The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith."" The day was April 12, 1945, the day of his death. The book remains timely and moving.

Have you ever wanted to write a story, but wondered where to start? The Write Your Own Story Book is here to help. It's full of inspiring ideas for all kinds of different stories, with space of you to write them in and writing tips to help you on your way.

This book was written in the hopes of helping, inspiring, and encouraging someone. I wish to tell others that no matter life’s situations, there are always others who have experienced similar, if not exactly, similar situations. Nicknames and other wordings have been used to give a more personal feel of My True Story. Thank you in advance for purchasing and reading my book.

In his own words, the heavyweight champion of the world pulls no punches as he chronicles the battles he faced in and out of the ring in this fascinating memoir edited by Nobel Prize-winning novelist, Toni Morrison. Growing up in the South, surrounded by racial bigotry and discrimination, Ali fought not just for a living, but also for respect and rewards far more precious than money or glory. He was named Sportsman of the Century by Sports Illustrated and the BBC. Ali redefined what it meant to be an athlete by giving hope to millions around the world and inspiring us all to fight for what is important to us. This is a multifaceted portrait of Muhammad Ali only he could render: sports legend; unapologetic anti-war advocate; outrageous showman and gracious goodwill ambassador; fighter, lover, poet, and provocateur; an irresistible force to be reckoned with. Who better to tell the tale than the man who went the distance living it?