Thomas Larson is a contributing writer for the weekly San Diego Reader and facilitator of private memoir-writing groups. His work has appeared in the Anchor Essay Annual: The Best of 1997 as well as the Chicago Reader, Boulevard, Southwest Review, Antioch Review, Gettysburg Review, Free Inquiry, and many other publications. He lives in San Diego.
Listed in: Essays · Creative Writing · Literary Studies
The Memoir and the Memoirist
Reading and Writing Personal Narrative
By Thomas Larson
The memoir is the most popular and expressive literary form of our time. Writers embrace the memoir and readers devour it, propelling many memoirs by relative unknowns to the top of the best-seller list. Writing programs challenge authors to disclose themselves in personal narrative. Memoir and personal narrative urge writers to face the intimacies of the self and ask what is true.