I know these Hills. I have moved among the people of the Sandhills for over 50 years, covered thousands of miles on back roads no more than sand ruts, investigated towns, traveled with ranchers into back country, and...

"I'm doing my first Authorchat," I announced to my writing students in class the other day. They sat up straighter, leaned into their computers and typed. A hand shot up. "Is this something I should be doing?" Worried faces.

We had been talking about the role of the author as...

"To be a person is to have a story to tell."

So said Isak Dinesen, pen name for the Danish writer Baroness Karen von Blixen. Dinesen gave us the deeply honest story of her life in Kenya during the last decades of the British Empire. You may remember Meryl Streep's...

"You should write about love memoirs," a friend counseled.

It seemed a logical suggestion for the month of February, a time for romance and passion, so I began perusing my shelves of memoir, querying friends and browsing library and bookstore stacks. Finally I took to surfing the internet in what...

You all dream of writing a story about your life and getting it published. I know you do. So what better time to make that dream come true than now, the start of the new year. You've examined your life. You've vowed to change it. Writing your story will do...

It is ironic that Hearst newspapers are some of the first going out of business these days since it was in early Hearst publications that investigative journalism first found its voice, and it is in this very voice that our ailing press may yet find salvation.

The

I don't know about you, but I'm fed up with obstructionist politics. Oh I know, the Republicans have an ideology to uphold. You can tell me I don't understand the intricacies of the political system, and you might be right, but as an author and story expert I do...

Now is the time to figure out what really matters. Is it home? Family? Love? Many people seem to think so. I certainly have been searching inside myself, in these surprising times, and inside the writers' stories I edit for a deeper heart of meaning.

That's why I watched with...

There are those little shifts that happen in our day-to-day lives, so simple that we fail to grasp the cataclysmic effect they represent in our universe. I'm still reeling from one of these that happened last week.

It was a simple gesture. President Obama turned to the American audience and...

I was shaking my head while watching Sarah Silverman's Great Schlep video where Ms. Silverman asks Jewish kids to fly to Florida and convince their grand parents to vote for Obama and mumbling this question: So, you've been cursed with living in interesting times; what's your story?

Silverman even...

You've probably seen it, Oprah's feast of memoir in the August issue of O magazine, a seventeen-page spread devoted to reading real-life stories. And if, like me, you're over 50, you also might have seen Abigail Thomas' piece about how to actually write this mysterious thing called memoir in O...

Yesterday, when I went to the local movie theatre for an afternoon matinee of Sex and the City a reporter approached me wanting to know why I came to the movies. Why, given the high price of gas and comestibles, were movies still a priority in my life? Well, beyond...

An eclectic group of writers, painters, musicians and actors gathered yesterday in Santa Fe to celebrate the Solstice and the arrival of summer. The food and company were great. The stories were better.

I had never thought about a summer gathering of artists where the stories would be all about...

Hillary Clinton is shifting the paradigm and the narrative. Because the story is everything in the culture of politics, these are important shifts to note.

Hillary, a woman who has broken barriers many women never dreamed could be approached, has a new story and it is a powerful, wise and...

As a writer and teacher of memoir I am bombarded by moderately-informed people spitting out the name James Frey whenever the topic of memoir comes up, eyebrows raised, fire on their tongues. It's true Frey's debacle made headlines, yet there are many misconceptions about what he did or did not...

I'm not in politics, don't live in Hollywood and am not part of the "industry."

I'm a writer and teacher who concentrates on the "story," and, fortunately for me, we live in an era of great stories and unlimited outlets and platforms to tell them.

I was struck by an...

Here's the thing: If Barack Obama wants to win this fall against John McCain -- and it seems obvious he will capture the Democratic nomination -- he needs to send his story to those reached only by MySpace, Facebook or iPods, parenting sites and tech guys, as well as to...