For anyone who enjoys reading memoirs—or is thinking about writing one—this collection offers a master class from nine distinguished authors, including Annie Dillard, Frank McCourt, and others.
The events, memories, and emotions of the past often resist the orderly structure of a book.
Inventing the Truth
offers wisdom from nine notable memoirists about their process (Ian Frazier searched through generations of family papers to understand his parents' lives), the hurdles they faced (Annie Dillard tackles the central dilemma of memoir: what to put in and what to leave out), and the unexpected joys of bringing their pasts to the page.
Featured authors include Russell Baker on
Growing Up
; Jill Ker Conway on
The Road from Coorain
; Annie Dillard on
An American Childhood
; Ian Frazier on
Family
; Henry Louis Gates Jr. on
Colored People
; Alfred Kazin on
A Walker in the City
; Frank McCourt on
Angela's Ashes
; Toni Morrison on
Beloved
; and Eileen Simpson on
Poets in Their Youth.