My versatility and fluency as a writer make it so I am equally at ease authoring academic pieces in scholarly journals and books, composing gripping articles for major media outlets, and crafting memorable creative nonfiction. What compels me in each of these various forms is my capacity for sharp observation, the ability to reveal larger patterns in social life, and a strong sense of voice.
So, in 2000, while I was working on my dissertation, I followed my passion and began studying memoir in earnest. I have taken many writing workshops including ones through: The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, Grub Street Writers in Boston, Massachusetts, The Blue Hills Writing Institute (formerly in Milton, MA), Union Institute and University in Montpelier, Vermont, and The Sun Magazine Writers’ Conference.
I call what I do sociological memoir in that I draw on sociology which I know, love and trust to reveal structural underpinnings and patterns, and I draw on memoir to both illustrate memories and as a vehicle to interpret them.
The analytical and interpretive properties of both—sociology and memoir—are quite similar. Sociology provides the conceptual, theoretical, and practical tools and vocabulary to explore the social forces that shape, support, complicate and constrain individuals’ choices and actions. Both sociology and memoir offer opportunities to analyze individuals’ relationships with social institutions and to question, reflect on, and put the pieces of our own lives together again.
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