Handling the Truth

In the tradition of Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird a critically acclaimed National Book Award finalist shares inspiration and practical advice for writing a memoir. . Writing memoir is a deeply personal and consequential undertaking. As the acclaimed author of five memoirs spanning significant turning points in her life Beth Kephart has been both blessed and bruised by the genre. In Handling the Truth she thinks out loud about the form—on how it gets made on what it means to make it on the searing language of truth on the thin line between remembering and imagining and finally on the rights of memoirists. Drawing on proven writing lessons and classic examples on the work of her students and on her own memories of weather landscape color and love Kephart probes the wrenching and essential questions that lie at the heart of memoir. . A beautifully written work in its own right Handling the Truth is Kephart’s memoir-writing guide for those who read or seek to write the truth.