Your Story: Is it a Memoir or Novel? From Experience to Book

Panel discussion with authors Cornelia Maude Spelman and Angela Jackson

 

Ver Steeg Lounge, Northwestern University Library

 

"Write what you know"—somewhere at this very moment a creative writing student is being
 told to draw on her experience to write her first assignment. Those who
 continue to write, and publish, use their lives as an inspiration and
 resource.  With the rise of the memoir and creative non-fiction as popular
 categories, the aspiring writer faces a dilemma over how to tell her story. Northwestern University Press authors Cornelia Maude Spelman (Missing: A Memoir) and Angela 
Jackson (Where I Must Go: A Novel) discuss their experiences and their decisions in publishing, respectively, a memoir and a novel.