November 22, 2009

"So Who Cares About Your Family?
How to Make Your Memoir Appeal
to a Broad Audience."

Frances Dinkelspiel

All of us are captivated by our own family history. Was it true that our great uncle had an illegitimate child? Did one of our ancestors fight in the Civil War? I was on the streets of Berkeley in 1969 protesting the Vietnam War and want to write about it.

The memoirs that get published are the ones that not only tell a personal story, but cast light on a larger social issue. In my session, “So Who Cares About Your Family? How to Make Your Memoir Appeal to a Broader Audience,” I will talk about adding depth and context to your writing. Drawing on my own experience writing Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, as well as other books, I will show how to find supporting material to set your characters in a specific time and place. Using tips from journalists, historians, and genealogists, your memoir can transcend family history and become compelling even to those who do not know you personally.

Frances Dinkelspiel is the author of TOWERS OF GOLD: HOW ONE JEWISH IMMIGRANT NAMED ISAIAS HELLMAN CREATED CALIFORNIA (St. Martins Press - November 2008), a San Francisco Chronicle 2008 Notable Bay Area Book and bestseller. TOWERS OF GOLD won a Northern California Independent Booksellers Association 2009 Book of the Year award and was a nominee for a Northern California Book Award for nonfiction.

Frances is a fifth-generation Californian who grew up in San Francisco. A graduate of Stanford University and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, Frances spent more than 20 years in the newspaper business, working as a general assignment reporter for a broad array of papers, from the Syracuse Newspapers in upstate New York to the San Jose Mercury News in northern California. Her freelance work has appeared in the New York Times, People Magazine, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Miami Herald, the Detroit Free Press, San Francisco Magazine, and other places. She has also taught at the Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley.

Visit her wonderful blog about books and writing, Ghost Word, at http://francesdinkelspiel.blogspot.com

To learn more about Frances and TOWERS OF GOLD, check out her website at http://www.francesdinkelspiel.com