What is a memoir?

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There are many differing opinions of what makes a piece of writing a memoir. This site encourages a very broad interpretation of what can be published:

Albert_Anker_Schreibunterricht_1865

  • Memoir is usually concerned with episodes or events from someone’s life. These can be quite everyday in nature, they don’t have to relate to life-changing or historically important events.
  • This site’s byline is every life has many stories. In other words, a memoir doesn’t have to be book-length, but can be quite brief. For example, it may deal with just one incident from someone’s life. We encourage you to contribute short memoirs to this site as this fits well with the online format.
  • While a memoir is often seen as focusing on the author’s own life, it may also be focused on another person. In other words, a memoir may comprise the author’s memories of an event from their own life or from the life of someone else they knew personally.
  • While a traditional memoir deals only with real events, fictional memoirs use the memoir format but deal with imaginary events from the lives of real or imaginary people.

It’s easy to get started: once you have written a short suitable piece, you can submit it to this site. To prevent spam or unsuitable material being published, all items are approved by the site administrator before they are published.

We suggest you first write your memoir using a word-processor and save it, then copy and paste the text into the submission page.

Image: The writing lesson by Albert Anker (1865)