The memoir genre satisfies two of our most human desires: to be known, and to know others
Here’s how we define memoir, its history and types, and how to get started writing your own
A memoir is a narrative, written from the perspective of the author, about an important part of their life
A narrative memoir is written by a human narrator who speaks directly to the reader, not an unspecified omniscient narrator, and they are usually written in first person (I, me, my and so on) making them highly personal
But that alone doesn’t make it narrative
Here are a couple of famous memoir examples, some of which you might recognize: Walden by Henry David Thoreau, Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt, Bec...
While both are accounts of the writer's experiences, autobiographies tend to span their entire life, providing the who-what-where-when-why of each...
Though there’s no definitive list of memoir subgenres, there are several broad types that most titles will fall under (with plenty of room for over...
