Resources

Books, Classes and Writing Communities

 

Cancer (or Illness) Memoirs:

• Caldwell, Gail.  2010.  Let’s Take the Long Way Home:  A Memoir of Friendship.  New York, NY:  Random House, Inc.
• Didion, Joan.  2011.  Blue Nights.  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.
• Didion, Joan.  2005.  A Year of Magical Thinking.  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.
• Goldberg, Natalie.  2018.  Let the Whole Thundering World Come Home.  Boulder, Colorado:  Shambhala Publications, Inc.
• Gawande, Atul.  2014.  Begin Mortal:  Medicine and What Matters in the End.  New York, NY:  Picador.
• Gubar, Susan.  2012.  Memoir of a Debulked Woman:  Enduring Ovarian Cancer.  New York, NY:  W. W. Norton and Company, Inc.
• Kalanithi, Paul.  2016.  When Breath Becomes Air.  New York, NY:  Corcovado, Inc.
• Maynard, Joyce. 2017.  The Best of Us.  New York, NY:  Bloomsbury.
• Munster, Pamela.  2018. Twisting Fate:  My Journey with BRCA-From Breast Cancer Doctor to Patient and Back.  New York, NY:  The Experiment, LLC.
• Radner, Gilda.  1989. It’s Always Something.  New York, NY:  Simon & Schuster Paperbacks.
• Scheel, Camille.  2015.  Camp Chemo:  Postcards Home from Metastatic Breast Cancer.  Edina, MN:  Beaver’s Pond Press.

Writing for Healing Guides:

• DeSalvo, Louise.  1999.  Writing as a Way of Healing:  How Telling Our Stories Transforms Our Lives.  Boston, MA:  Beacon Press.
• Gubar, Susan.  2016.  Reading and Writing Cancer.  New York, NY:  W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Writing as a Spiritual or Creative Practice:

• Andrew, Elizabeth Jarrett.  2018.  Living Revision:  A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice.  Boston, Massachusetts:  Skinner House Books.
• Andrew, Elizabeth Jarrett.  2005.  Writing the Sacred Journey:  The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir.  Boston, MA:  Skinner House Books.
• Gilbert, Elizabeth.  2015.  Big Magic:  Creative Living Beyond Fear.   New York, NY:  Riverhead Books.

Writing Craft Books:

• Dillard, Annie.  Teaching a Stone to Talk.  New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.
• Dillard, Annie.  1989.  The Writing Life.  HarperCollins Publishers.
• Cameron, Julia.  1998.  The Write to Write:  An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life.  New York, NY:  Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.
• Franklin, Jon.  1986.  Writing for Story.  New York, NY:  Plume.
• Goldberg, Natalie.  1986.  Writing Down the Bones:  Freeing the Writer Within.  Boston, MA:  Shambhala.
• Karr, Mary.  2015.  The Art of Memoir.  New York, NY:  HarperCollins Publishers.
• King, Stephen.  2000.  On Writing:  A Memoir of the Craft.  New York, NY:  Scribner.
• Lamott, Anne.  1994.  Bird by Bird:  Some Instructions on Writing and Life. New York, NY: 
• Pantheon Books.
• Myers, Linda Joy.  2010.  The Power of Memoir:  How to Write Your Healing Story.  San Francisco, CA:  Jossey-Bass.
• Silverman, Sue William.  2009.  Fearless Confessions:  A Writer’s Guide to Memoir.  Athens, Georgia:  The University of Georgia Press.

Other Favorite Memoirs:

• Deraniyagala, Sonali.  2013.  Wave.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf. (Video on motivation for writing.)
• Karr, Mary.  2009.  Lit.  New York, NY:  Harper-Collins Publishers. 
• Kaysen, Susanna.  1993.  Girl, Interrupted.  New York, NY:  Vintage Books.
• McCracken, Elizabeth.  2008.  An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination.  New York, NY:  Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company.
• Patchett, Ann.  2004.  Truth and Beauty:  A Friendship.  New York, NY:  Harper-Collins Publishers.
• Shapiro, Dani.  2019.  Inheritance:  A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf.
• Strayed, Cheryl.  2012.  Wild:  From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail.  New York, NY:  Alfred A. Knopf.
• Westover, Tara.  2018.  Educated.  New York, NY:  Random House.

Favorite Memoirs by Minnesota Authors:

• Flynn, Laura.  2008.  Swallow the Ocean.  Berkeley, CA:  Counterpoint.
• Helget, Nicole Lea.  2005.  The Summer of Ordinary Ways.  Saint Paul, MN:  Borealis Books. 
• Liautaud, Judy.  2013.  Sunlight on my Shadow:  A Birthmother’s Journey from Secrecy to Renewal.  Minneapolis, MN:  City Creek Press.

Writing Classes and Communities:

• The Loft Literary Center – Offers a wide variety of writing classes including classes on writing for healing.
• Wisdom Ways –  Offers a wide variety of classes including a monthly session called “Writing the Sacred Journey” with Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew.
• Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew – Offers writing courses and events around writing spiritual memoir.
• Karen Hering – Offers writing courses and events, including monthly writing sessions called Open Pages.