Sea to Sky Literary Contest

Story of Mine

"A memoir is how one remembers
one's own life, while an autobiography
is history, requiring research, dates,
facts double-checked"
--from Palimpsest by Gore Vidal (Penguin, 1996).

"Unlike autobiography, which moves
in a dutiful line from birth to fame,
memoir narrows the lens, focusing on
a time in the writer's life that was
unusually vivid, such as childhood or
adolescence, or that was framed by
war or travel or public service or some
other special circumstance"
--p. 15 of Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of
Memoir by William Zinsser