Reading & Craft Talk: Boris Fishman: 10 Things that Make Great Memoirs Great

Tuesday, July 28, 6 – 7 p.m. EST

The great secret of the best memoirs is that they read like novels. Well, how do you do that? Novelist and memoirist Boris Fishman will discuss 10 moves that will get you started, ranging from the technical to the philosophical. This is your chance to find out, among other things:

• How to lie more skillfully (only on the page and never in memoir, of course!)
• The two biggest blind spots of writing about yourself
• Why the chocolate-sauce test is among the most important things you can do for your writing
• Why you might need to “ignore” your reader

And more!

Boris Fishman immigrated to the U.S. at nine, from the former Soviet Union. He is the author of the novels A Replacement Life (which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award and the American Library Association’s Sophie Brody Medal), and Don’t Let My Baby Do Rodeo, both New York Times Notable Books of the Year, and Savage Feast, a family memoir told through recipes. His journalism has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, Travel + Leisure, The London Review of Books, The Washington Post, and many other publications. He lives in New York and teaches creative writing at Princeton University.