Momoirs Book

Momoirs Excerpts

The quality of writing that the women in my workshop have produced has been amazing. It’s a wonderful example of what comes from writing about what you know. Three out of the 16 Honored Writers from the 2010 Westport Arts Center Memoir Compeitition were from a MoMoirs group.

“My sister Linda and I stood dutifully by, arms at our sides watching with eyes transfixed as the flames licked out of the top. I, not quite as tall as the frightful oven, she tall enough to have her face freakishly lit by the orange light, able to look in as each scrap of paper disappeared forever into the flames.”
From “The Incinerator” by Lisa Maxwell

They called the police. I was missing. It was January, the harbor was frozen, it was dark out, after six o’clock. Six o’clock was dinnertime, everyone in the family was supposed to be home by dinnertime.
Mother was frantic, eight year old girl missing in snow covered seascape. I did notice it was getting late, but I was busy building an igloo with my friend Tommy Butler.
From ” The Punishment" by Eileen Grace

I drove up in our '55 two-tone green Chevy onto the driveway of our humble, red brick home in Mariemont, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. As a junior in high school I had grown to my full height of 5'6" and had "filled out" about as much as I was going to fill out, which was nothing to write home about. I was extremely tan wearing white short shorts, with a tight turquoise tee-shirt to match my eyes. My zits, thank God, had at last vanished. So I was pretty much a finished teenage product. As I approached our screened in front porch, I heard my mom's voice, saw my stepfather, and heard a third voice. A voice that I swear resonated to my very soul. It was from some far away three year old place, unfamiliar yet familiar, in some spooky way. With trepidation, I slowly opened the squeaky screen door. Then I saw HIM.
My mother said, "Gayle, say hello to your father."
From “First Daddy Second Chance” by Gayle Gleckler

How to capture light in a bottle? Perhaps if I wring my heart out onto a piece of paper, the load that I carry will be lighter just by the sharing. Since the very second that I found out that you were something in the making, I felt as if I were slowly--slowly unwrapping the largest longest gift this world has ever known! Slowly peeling back layers of colored tissue paper to uncover another piece of the present. How could I be so lucky as to have been given the best present in the room? In the world? Ever?
From “Shoshana: Light in a Bottle” by Judy Clark