Kathleen Finneran

Articles by Kathleen Finneran

Lying in the Land of Memoir: Straddling the Line Between Fact and Fiction

I've never been good at telling the truth. From the time I first encountered stories as a child, I understood that they were meant to be manipulated, details added or deleted toward a desired result. I suspect the situation is the same for most memoirists. I suspect we have trouble with the unalterable truth, the whole truth and nothing but t... (read more)

Bringing Real People to Life in Memoir

In many ways, we memoirists have it made. Our plots present themselves to us wholly realized; our characters come to us fully formed. By using our own lives as subject matter, we are spared the hard work of imagination that fiction writers must bring to their craft. You might say that we're already ahead of the game going in.

If you were a writer fond of using sports m... (read more)