Mary Karr

The Art of Memoir Mary Karr

Publisher Marketing: Credited with sparking the current memoir explosion, Mary Karr's The Liars' Club spent more than a year at the top of the New York Times list. She followed with two other smash bestsellers: Cherry and Lit, which were critical hits as well. For thirty years Karr has also taught the form, winning graduate teaching prizes for her highly selective seminar at Syracuse, where she mentored such future hit authors as Cheryl Strayed, Keith Gessen, and Koren Zailckas. In The Art of Memoir, she synthesizes her expertise as professor and therapy patient, writer and spiritual seeker, recovered alcoholic and "black belt sinner," providing a unique window into the mechanics and art of the form that is as irreverent, insightful, and entertaining as her own work in the genre. Anchored by excerpts from her favorite memoirs and anecdotes from fellow writers' experience, The Art of Memoir lays bare Karr's own process (plus all those inside stories about how she dealt with family and friends get told-and the dark spaces in her own skull probed in depth). As she breaks down the key elements of great literary memoir, she breaks open our concepts of memory and identity, and illuminates the cathartic power of reflecting on the past; anybody with an inner life or complicated history, whether writer or reader, will relate. Joining such classics as Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, The Art of Memoir is an elegant and accessible exploration of one of today's most popular literary forms-a tour de force from an accomplished master pulling back the curtain on her craft. Review Citations: Library Journal Prepub Alert 04/01/2015 pg. 61 (EAN 9780062223067, Hardcover) Kirkus Reviews 05/15/2015 pg. 28 (EAN 9780062223067, Hardcover) Kirkus Reviews 07/01/2015 (EAN 9780062223067, Hardcover) Library Journal 07/01/2015 pg. 98 (EAN 9780062223067, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Publishers Weekly 07/06/2015 (EAN 9780062223067, Hardcover) - *Starred Review Contributor Bio:  Karr, Mary Mary Karr is the author of three award-winning, bestselling memoirs: The Liars' Club, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; Cherry, which was selected as a "notable book" by book reviews nationwide; and Lit, which was one of the New York Times Book Review's Ten Best Books of the Year (and made virtually every other Best of the Year list) and a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist. A Guggenheim Fellow in poetry, Karr has won Pushcart Prizes for both verse and essays. She is the Peck Professor of Literature at Syracuse University.