Your Life as Story - by Tristine Rainer (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

In Your Life As Story, autobiography expert Tristine Rainer explains how we can all find the important messages in our lives. Like Mary Karr or Frank McCourt, we can shape those stories into dramatic narratives that are compelling to others. Blending literary scholarship with practical coaching, Rainer shares her remarkable techniques for finding the essentials of story structure within your life's scattered experiences. Most important, she explains how to treasure the struggles in your past and discover the meaning within those experiences to capture the unique myth at work in your life.

Review Quotes

"A compelling sourcebook for all writers interested in putting their life stories down on paper . . . at once encouraging, forceful, and thoroughly convincing."
--Booklist

"Your Life as Story is like a French dessert: rich and luscious, to be slowly devoured and savored for all it offers."
--Writers Connection

"A book both practical and inspiring. Rainer knows how to shape autobiography into art, and she shares this knowledge with clairty, enthusiasm, and a knack for choosing writers' words that best illustrate her point."
--Bernard Cooper, personal essayist and memoirist, author of Maps to Anywhere and Truth Serum Memoirs

About the Author

Tristine Rainer is the director of the Center for Autobiographic Studies in Pasadena, California. She teaches autobiographic writing at the University of California Los Angeles and at the University of Southern California.