Published Books by Memoir Project Students
HERE AT THE MEMOIR PROJECT, we are deeply proud of the work of our clients and students. Everyone who comes to the Memoir Project starts at the same place — at Memoirama, our entry-level course, in which you learn the basics of writing what you know. After that, there are a series of live and recorded online classes on book structure, writing opinion pieces, the art of the personal essay, a Master Class in writing a book-length memoir and much more. To date, there are 153 books on Marion’s shelves of those who have published working with her. Here is a partial list of the published books by Memoir Project Students.
Books by Our Students
The Widow’s Guide to Dead Bastards
Algorithm: It’s about whether relationships can heal across the veil, as illustrated by my quest to understand after my husband’s sudden death and the discovery of his betrayals, to be told in a book.
Author: Jessica Waite
Argument: Facing the truth opens possibilities for healing and true love
A Little Less Broken: How an Autism Diagnosis Finally Made Me Whole
Author: Marian Schembari
“Marion’s classes played a huge role in my ability to write and sell my memoir. After reading The Memoir Project cover to cover, I enrolled in Memoirama 1 and 2, which were incredibly clarifying. These classes helped me navigate dozens of childhood journals and extensive research without getting overwhelmed or distracted by 100 side tangents. Thanks to her classes, I was able to write a killer book proposal with a clear chapter outline that sold within just a few weeks to a major publisher in a life-changing deal. Marion’s was the only class I took during that time that was concretely helpful. Over the following year, I kept returning to Marion’s advice and wrote a memoir I’m enormously proud of. I honestly don’t know if I could have done it without Marion.” – Marian Schembari, author of A Little Less Broken
Letting Magic In: A Memoir of Becoming
Author: Maia Toll
Algorithm: This story is about learning to trust your inner guidance, as illustrated by a journey I took from being a second grade teacher in Brooklyn, NY
to becoming an herbalist/witch’s apprentice in Ireland.
Argument: Taking a leap of faith and following your intuition allows your life to expand in unexpected ways so that can remind your sense of purpose.
While You Were Out: An Intimate Family Portrait of Mental Illness in an Era of Silence
Author: Meg Kissinger
Algorithm: It’s about conquering shame as illustrated by my family’s battle with mental illness to be told in a reported memoir.
Author: Marsh Rose
Algorithm: We all face the unknown, as illustrated in an unconventional relationship, told in a memoir available from the publisher and on Amazon in paperback and eBook.
The Epic of You: Reframe Your Past to Navigate Your Future
Author: Peter H. Bailey
Algorithm: “My story is about reframing challenging life experiences as illustrated by retelling my life through the lens of the Heroic Journey to be told in a book for anyone in transition, mid-life, or struggling to find meaning.
Argument: “By retelling our life experiences through the lens of the Heroic journey, we can see when hard moments brought honey to our hearts and strength to our sword arms.”
“After I read Marion Roach Smith’s book, The Memoir Project, I plunged into the “World of Marion,” taking all of her free classes, her fee workshops, and then applied for the Master Class and follow up coaching. Her no-nonsense approach, her profoundly useful formulas and editing skills truly shaped this story to make it a much better book. I will always be grateful!”
Risking Rest: Embracing God’s Love Through Life’s Uncertainties
Author: Carolyn J. Watts
Algorithm: This is about learning to rest in God’s love, as illustrated by my obstetrical work in Afghanistan and the resulting fallout, to be told in a book.
Argument: It is safe to trust God’s love, and living the obstetrical imagery in Scripture can help us experience that safety.
Karma and Kismet: A Spiritual Quest Across Continents, Cultures, and Consciousness
Author: Michael Shandler
Argument: Even after violent conflict and family breakdown there is always hope for reconciliation.
Algorithm: Even after conflict, violence, and cutoff between a father and son, there is always hope for reconciliation — as illustrated in a book length memoir about how my father and I journeyed from karmic rage, through family dissolution, sixteen year cutoff and seeking in far off places, to a miraculous reconciliation.
Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived
Author: Karen Debonis
Algorithm: The story is about shattered expectations of motherhood, as illustrated by parenting my son through his brain tumor, told in a book-length memoir.
Argument: For the right woman in the wrong circumstances, motherhood is a test of survival.
The Woman of the House
Author: Amanda Harding
Algorithm: It is about post-traumatic growth, as illustrated by how I became the woman of our house at ten years old.
Argument: Post-traumatic growth is a result of processing grief.
Carrying My Father’s Torch: From Holocaust Trauma to Transformation
Author: Gail Gaspar
Algorithm: This is about how to heal from family legacy trauma as illustrated through a father-daughter relationship as told in a book.
An Artist’s Odyssey
Author: Sarkis Antikajian
Algorithm: It’s about achieving a childhood dream, inconceivable in a certain place and time, as illustrated in pursuing unforeseen probabilities in another place and time with a relentless commitment to purpose, told in a book.
Argument: Perseverance is essential to achieve one’s goal. To succeed, commit to a purpose.
Dancing Around the Truth
Author: Christine Jacobsen
Algorithm: It’s about how being true to yourself will set you free, as illustrated by taking a DNA test and learning the truth of your origins, as told in a book.
Argument: After living in denial, the truth will set you free.
Willower: Rewriting Life After Loss
Author: Deanna Kassenoff
Algorithm: X: It’s about using the power of story and imagination to survive the unimaginable; Y: As illustrated by the sudden death of a child; Z: told in a book.
Argument: After the death of your child, migrating through grief and relearning to live again is an ongoing and lifelong readjustment process that requires patience, time, and imagination—a necessary survival tool.
A Cup of Tea on the Commode: My multi-tasking adventures of caring for Mom. And how I survived to tell the tale.
Author: Mark Steven Porro
Algorithm: It’s about honoring my mother. Illustrated by filling her final years with love, laughter, and joy. As told in my memoir.
Mother of My Invention
Author: Janice Airhart
Algorithm: Mother of My Invention: A Motherless Daughter Memoir is the story of overcoming the loss of a mother due to mental illness, as illustrated by the many ways I experienced my mother’s absence and learned to rely on others to supply my needs, as told in a book-length memoir.
Argument: Mothers can be found in unexpected places, if we’re willing to look for them.
The Run of My Life: A Memoir of Healing
Author: Rochelle Finzel
I didn’t know the first thing about writing a memoir until I read your book and took your Memoirama class. It took a lot of vomit drafts and many xyz formula iterations to finally figure out my argument and complete my book-length memoir. The Run of My Life: A Memoir of Healing is about how it often takes a crisis to discover what you’re capable of (and what matters) as illustrated by my journey through stage four cancer and told in a book. It will be published in September with Bold Story Press, and I would love to have it listed on your site. I can provide the purchasing links as I get closer to the publication date.
Hearts Wide Open: Leaving Religion, Finding Faith
Author: Cedric Johnson PhD
It relates to the experience of millions who are leaving the beliefs and prescribed behaviors of organized religion in search for direct faith that gives meaning to their lives, as told in my memoir “Hearts Wide Open; Leaving Religion Finding Faith”
Counterfeit Mother
Author: Deborah DiSesa Hirsch
Argument: I had to use a donor to have my son and never felt like his real mother. This book is about my journey and how I learned I really was. It’s a book about motherhood.
Algorithm: It’s my story about how I never felt like my son’s mother, illustrated by my journey to conceive him using a donor as told in a book.
You Know Who
Author: Dana Laquidara
Algorithm: It’s about speaking the Truth as illustrated by my experience of being alienated from my loving mother as told in a book-length memoir.
Argument: You cannot recover your authentic power until you speak your Truth.
Breath Taking: A Memoir of Family, Dreams, and Broken Genes
Author: Jessica Fein
Algorithm: It’s about learning to create a life of joy and meaning in the midst of loss and uncertainty as illustrated by my daughter’s diagnosis with a rare degenerative disease to be told in a memoir.
Argument: It’s possible to create a life of joy and meaning even in the most devastating circumstances.
Autistic Revelations: Body Edition: What My Head-to-Toe Surgeries Have Taught Me About Life and Autism
Author: Donna Brendel
Argument: Life will try to knock you down one disorder and body part at a time, and there’s a lesson to learn in each battle.
Algorithm: This is about overcoming autism, bodily injury, and malfunction, as illustrated by my head to toe surgeries, to be told in a book.
THE FINE ART OF GRIEVING an art illuminated memoir
Author: Jane Edberg
Published by Linen Press, 2024
ALGORITHM: The Fine Art of Grieving is a story about making a new life worth living after traumatic loss as
Illustrated by an artist mother who uses art to process her grief to be told in a book.
ARGUMENT: Not only is it possible to heal grief from traumatic loss but you can also build a new life that is better than the life you had before your traumatic loss.
The Dutiful Daughter’s Guide to Caregiving: A Practical Memoir
Author: Judith Henry
Argument: The Dutiful Daughter’s Guide to Caregiving: A Practical Memoir shares everything I learned as a healthcare advocate for my parents during their final years. It’s also about forgiving myself for not being the perfect daughter and caregiver; finding joy at the most unexpected times; and discovering that laughter will often save you when nothing else will. My hope is that the book will prove helpful and hopeful to anyone navigating this life-changing rite of adulthood. And for those realizing you don’t even know the questions, much less the answers – Welcome.
Spoke by Spoke: How a Broken Back and a Broken Bike Led to a WholeHearted Life
Author: Terry Chase
Algorithm: The work is about my thirty plus years living with spinal cord injury illustrated by reflective stories, personal learnings, wisdom gained, challenges faced and creative solutions to be told in short form essays in a book.
Argument: Living with spinal cord injury offers challenges, opportunities, growth points for living a wholehearted life.
The Ageless Angler: A Guide to Fly-Fish More as You Age
Author: Brian Baudis
Algorithm: It is about how aging is not about crumbling into less organized bits but discarding stereotypes and relearning agency as illustrated by my journey aging and becoming stronger in the presence of disease, as told in a book.
Celebration of Sisters: It’s Never to Late to Grieve
Author: Judy Lipson
The loss of two sisters many decades ago impacted my life and took me on a journey to grieve that had been suppressed, and found a way to come full circle through ice skating to honor my beloved sisters.
Cottage Test: Escaping an Abusive Relationship
Author: Kathryn Filbey
Cottage Test is about developing self-confidence to overcome abuse, as illustrated by my years of gaining self-confidence while living a self-sufficient lifestyle in the Northwoods, which I’ve told in a book.
Deep Roots, Good Fruit: Seeing the Fruit of the Spirit Through Story and Scripture
Author: Kristin Elizabeth Couch
Algorithm: It’s about the deepening work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian’s life that yields nine stunning traits, as illustrated by personal stories and Scripture, to be told in a book.
Falling Up: A Memo of Second Chances
Author: Scott Edward Anderson
Algorithm: It’s about becoming an authentic, vulnerable, and purpose-driven man as illustrated by the author’s personal journey of self-discovery, and deepening connections with both nature and his children, told in a short memoir.
Object: A Memoir
Author: Kristin Louise Duncombe
Algorithm: OBJECT is about the lifelong struggle to reclaim self-worth after childhood sexual abuse and institutional silencing, as illustrated by the author’s experience of assault and cover-up within U.S. diplomatic circles in West Africa, as told in a book length memoir.
Running Naked: Surviving the Legacy of Family in Rural Nebraska
Author: Colby Cash
Algorithm: It’s about facing your future as illustrated by a kid who runs away as told in a book-length memoir.
When Push Comes to Shove: Real Life on Dead Tour
Author: Hollie A. Rose
Algorithm: It’s about freedom in the face of governmental injustice as illustrated by Deadheads and Hippies in the 1980s to be told in a format of journal entries.
Silos, Secrets and Silence: Forgiving My Family’s Alcoholism
Author: Mary Anne Totten
Algorithm: It’s about surviving the demons of alcoholism and achieving forgiveness illustrated by stories about my family as told in a book.
Sad Sacked
Author: Liz Alterman
Algorithm: This is a story about unemployment and the disparity in the way men’s and women’s work is viewed and valued illustrated by my personal experiences when my husband and I simultaneously lost our jobs, told in a memoir.
The Tennis Champion Who Escaped the Nazis
Author: Felice Hardy
Algorithm: Survival, identity and resilience under Nazi persecution, as illustrated by the true story of my grandmother Liesl Herbst and her daughter Dorli who fled Vienna and became the only mother and daughter ever to play doubles at Wimbledon, told in a gripping, narrative non-fiction style that reads like a novel but is rooted in detailed historical research.
Identifying the Child: From Fear to Faith
Author: Donna Smith
Algorithm: The book is about the spiritual awakening of a woman. A written memoir about a woman remembering things from her past experiences that she now has answers to. The book starts from her earliest memories. Learning to pray at an early age helped her with what she was going through. Her dreams were vivid and appeared as if they really happened. She prayed and asked God about everything she was going through and her faith and belief worked. When she started getting information from stories and movies she finally realized she had a gift and appeared to be empathetic.
High Priest: Remembering How I Am
Author: Orriya Pollak
Algorithm: It’s about moving from seeking to sovereignty, as illustrated by an early practitioner in the psychedelic renaissance – a working guide who turns the mirror inward, lays down the training wheels, and lets go of external validation, to be told in tight, scene-based micro-memoir with humor and faith.
The Diaries of a Teenage Pilgrim: The Early Journey
Author: Lydia Friend
Algorithm: It’s about finding God’s calling amid change and uncertainty, as illustrated by a young teen’s cross-cultural journey from Wisconsin to Israel to Missouri between the ages of thirteen and seventeen, to be told in a reflective memoir interlaced with diary entries and poetry