Best-selling author Anna Quindlen says recording our daily lives in an enduring form is more important than ever, urging all of us to pick up a pen and find ourselves.
On Wednesday, Oct. 12, she joins Anne Curzan, U-M dean and English professor, for an engaging discussion about Quindlen’s latest book, “Write for Your Life,” and how anyone can write and why everyone should.
The new book argues that there has never been a more important time to stop and record what we are thinking and feeling. Using examples from past, present and future — from Anne Frank to Toni Morrison, from love letters written after World War II to journal reflections from nurses and doctors today — “Write for Your Life” illuminates the ways in which writing connects us to ourselves and to those we cherish.
Drawing on her personal experiences not just as a writer but as a mother and daughter, Quindlen makes the case that recording our daily lives in writing is essential. She maintains that when we write, we not only look, we see; we not only react but reflect. Writing gives you something to hold onto in a changing world. “To write the present,” Quindlen says, “is to believe in the future.”
Quindlen will discuss all this and more at a free, open-to-the-public event at the University of Michigan’s Rackham Auditorium (915 Washington St. in Ann Arbor, Michigan) at 6 p.m. ET.
For those who can’t make it in person, you can join the conversation live on this page or on the PBS Books Facebook page.
This event is presented by the U-M Wallace House Center for Journalists, in partnership with PBS Books and Detroit Public TV.
About Anna Quindlen
Anna Quindlen is a novelist and journalist whose work has appeared in fiction, nonfiction, and self-help bestseller lists. She is the author of many novels: “Object Lessons,” “One True Thing,” “Black and Blue,” “Blessings,” “Rise and Shine,” “Every Last One,” “Still Life with Bread Crumbs” and “Miller’s Valley.” Her memoir, “Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake,” published in 2012, was a #1 New York Times bestseller.
Her book, “A Short Guide to a Happy Life” has sold more than a million copies. While a columnist at The New York Times she won the Pulitzer Prize and published two collections, “Living Out Loud” and “Thinking Out Loud.”
About Anne Curzan
Anne Curzan, dean of the University of Michigan College of Literature, Science, and the Arts, is a trained linguist, who studies the history of the English language. She describes herself as a fount of random linguistic information about how English got to be the way it is — information she shares every Sunday on the show, “That’s What They Say,” on Michigan Public Radio.
Curzan can also be found talking about language on the blog, “Lingua Franca,” for the Chronicle of Higher Education, in short videos on the LSA Wire and in the column, “Talking About Words,” in Michigan Today. Her TEDx talk at U-M called “What makes a word ‘real’?” has more than1.2 million views on the national TED site.
