Tag: Memoir

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Funky Spunky Literature Night at Quinn’s

As part of my participation in 2018 Beacon Open Studios, I am throwing a Funky Spunky Literature Night at Quinn’s, the best and funkiest venue in Beacon!

April 29, 2018

Funky Spunky Literature Night with Donna Minkowitz and the BOS After Party! 6:30pm, Quinn’s, 330 Main Street, Beacon NY 12508.

Join Donna Minkowitz and special guests in an evening of sexy, edgy, heartfelt literary writing. Minkowitz and Julie Chibbaro, Ruth Danon, and Banana Bag and Bodice theater company will read from their funkiest, most vulnerable, fiercest work, then guide the audience in a game-show-like Memoir Write-a-Thon with prizes for the best sentences and scenes that audience members write about their own lives!

This event will also be the official After Party for Beacon Open Studios! :-) Come one, come all. Music by DJs follows the readings and game show! Delicious food and drink available.

You can RSVP on the Facebook event page here.

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Spring Memoir Workshop in Brooklyn

Brooklyn memoir classes

Hey, I’ll be teaching an 8-week memoir writing workshop in Brooklyn this fall! The class will meet on Wednesday nights starting January 27 in Windsor Terrace, from 7 to 9 PM.

This workshop focuses on craft – particularly on using emotion, sensory details, and storytelling in your long and short memoir projects. Students will get frequent feedback in a supportive atmosphere. The number of students is limited to eight. The cost is $325.

Let me know if you’re interested. You can contact me at growingupgolem AT Gmail. All best – Donna

Here’s some info on my background:

Donna Minkowitz has taught memoir writing for 18 years, at venues including the 92nd Street Y, The Kitchen, the JCC of the Upper West Side, and the New York Writers Workshop. Her recent memoir, Growing Up Golem: How I Survived My Mother, Brooklyn, and Some Really Bad Dates, was a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Award and the Judy Grahn Nonfiction Award. Her first memoir, Ferocious Romance, won a Lammie. A former feature writer at The Village Voice, she has also written for The New York Times Book Review, Salon, New York magazine, Ms. and The Nation.

More info: Location is near the F/G stop at Fort Hamilton Parkway. The last class date is March 16.

FAQ: Refund Policy: Withdrawal by January 22: full refund. Withdrawal by January 26: 50% refund. No refund available for withdrawal after January 29.

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What’s Spiritual about Memoir?

Pens that can fly


This is from a talk I gave at the Brooklyn Society for Ethical Culture in October 2010. It’s about why memoir is good. :) For writers, readers, and the entire world.

I started writing memoir in the early 90s, when I was a journalist at the Village Voice. And almost inevitably, when I was at a party or the gym or a political meeting and said what I was doing, someone would ask, “Aren’t you a little young for that?”  I was 28 when I began.  And I would take a deep breath and answer, “No.”

Before the late 1980s, people generally used the word “memoir” to mean a fat and comprehensive book written by someone at the end of their lives, almost always someone very famous, like a president or a movie star or a Titan of Industry.

Of course, people who weren’t as prominent as that had been writing personal accounts of their lives for hundreds of years, thousands if you count poetry. They just hadn’t been calling them memoirs. Continue reading “What’s Spiritual about Memoir?”