Angela's Ashes: A Memoir is a 1996 memoir by the Irish-American author Frank McCourt, with various anecdotes and stories of his childhood. The book details his early childhood in Brooklyn, New York, but focuses primarily on his life in Limerick, Ireland. It also includes his struggles with poverty and his father's alcoholism.
David James Pelzer is an American author of several autobiographical and self-help books. His 1995 memoir of childhood abuse, A Child Called "It": One Child's Courage to Survive, was listed on The New York Times Best Seller list for several years, and in 5 years had sold at least 1.6 million copies. The book brought Pelzer fame, and has also been a source of controversy, with accusations of several events being fabricated coming from both family members and journalists.
Oprah's Book Club was a book discussion club segment of the American talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, highlighting books chosen by host Oprah Winfrey. Winfrey started the book club in 1996, selecting a new book, usually a novel, for viewers to read and discuss each month. In total, the club recommended 70 books during its 15 years.
Andre Dubus III is an American novelist and short story writer. He is a member of the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Lowell.
Roya Hakakian is an Iranian American Jewish journalist, lecturer, and writer. Born in Iran, she came to the United States as a refugee and is now a naturalized citizen. She is the author of several books, including an acclaimed memoir in English called Journey from the Land of No (Crown), Assassins of the Turquoise Palace (Grove/Atlantic), and A Beginner's Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious (Knopf).
Elizabeth Murray is an American memoirist and inspirational speaker who is notable for having been accepted by Harvard University despite being homeless in her high school years. Her life story was chronicled in Lifetime's television film Homeless to Harvard: The Liz Murray Story (2003). Murray's memoir Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard, published in 2010 is a New York Times Bestseller.
Martha Elizabeth "Libba" Bray is an American writer of young adult novels including the Gemma Doyle Trilogy, Going Bovine, and The Diviners.
Jennifer Donnelly is an American writer best known for the young adult historical novel A Northern Light.
Dani Shapiro is an American writer, the author of six novels including Family History (2003), Black & White (2007) and most recently Signal Fires (2022) and the best-selling memoirs Slow Motion (1998), Devotion (2010), Hourglass (2017), and Inheritance (2019). She has also written for magazines such as The New Yorker, The Oprah Magazine, Vogue, and Elle. In February 2019, she created an original podcast on iHeartRadio called Family Secrets.
The Glass Castle is a 2005 memoir by American author Jeannette Walls. Walls recounts her dysfunctional and nomadic yet vibrant upbringing, emphasizing her resilience and her father's attempts toward redemption. Despite her family's flaws, their love for each other and her unique perspective on life allowed her to create a successful life of her own, culminating in a career in journalism in New York City. The book's title refers to her father's ultimate unfulfilled promise, to build his dream home for the family: a glass castle.
Roger Rosenblatt is an American memoirist, essayist, and novelist. He was a long-time essayist for Time magazine and PBS NewsHour.
Jennifer Lauck is an American fiction and non-fiction author, essayist, speaker and writing instructor. She is the author of four books including the New York Times best seller Blackbird. Her writing has been published in the U.S. and around the world and translated into several languages. Much of her popularity began when she appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show in 2000 and Winfrey held the book up to her audience saying, "This should have been a book of the month book. Read it now."
Cynthia Bond is an American author and actress. Her debut novel Ruby spent six consecutive weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, and was chosen as a selection for Oprah's Book Club 2.0. She was born in Hempstead, Texas, and now lives in Los Angeles, California. Bond won a journalism scholarship to Northwestern University she then studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Bond was a PEN Rosenthal Fellow for Emerging Writers. Bond is also on staff at the Paradigm Malibu Adolescent Treatment Center.
Surpassing Certainty: What My Twenties Taught Me is a 2017 memoir by Janet Mock. Following on her 2014 memoir, Redefining Realness, which described Mock's childhood and adolescence, Surpassing Certainty deals with her early adulthood. It received favorable reviews.
Tara Westover is an American memoirist, essayist and historian. Her memoir Educated (2018) debuted at No. 1 on The New York Times bestseller list and was a finalist for a number of national awards, including the LA Times Book Prize, PEN America's Jean Stein Book Award, and two awards from the National Book Critics Circle Award. The New York Times ranked Educated as one of the 10 Best Books of 2018. Westover was chosen by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2019.
Renée Watson is an American teaching artist and author of children's books, best known for her award-winning and New York Times bestselling young adult novel Piecing Me Together, for which she received the John Newbery Honor, Coretta Scott King Author Award, and Bank Street Children's Book Committee's Josette Frank Award for fiction. Watson founded the nonprofit I, Too, Arts Collective to provide creative arts programs to the Harlem community. She is a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Mieke Eerkens is a Dutch-American writer. Her book, All Ships Follow Me., was published by Picador (imprint) in 2019. Her work has been anthologized in W. W. Norton & Company’s Fakes, edited by David Shields; Best Travel Writing 2011; and Outpost 19’s A Book of Uncommon Prayer, among others. She is a graduate of the University of Iowa’s MFA program in Nonfiction Writing.
Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me is a 2019 memoir by American writer Adrienne Brodeur. It recounts the author's collision with her mother, Malabar Brewster, to conceal an affair Brewster was having while Brodeur was a teenager.
The Meaning of Mariah Carey is a memoir by Mariah Carey, released on September 29, 2020. It was written with Michaela Angela Davis, and was published by Andy Cohen Books, an imprint of Henry Holt, as well as in an audiobook format read by Carey herself on Audible. The book navigates the complex racial, social, cultural and familial tensions associated with Carey's upbringing as a biracial woman in Long Island, New York. This is framed alongside first-hand descriptions of the singer's personal and professional triumphs and struggles, and is interspersed with fragments of Carey's songwriting output.
