The editors at Smith magazine know: sometimes a good story needs only six words. But when editor Larry Smith toured to promote the wildly popular Six-Word Memoirs series, he heard dozens of raw, powerful, funny, heartbreaking, life-changing stories--most of them longer than six words. This volume collects 125 of those tales--some a scant few paragraphs, others stretching to two or three pages--of key moments, both dramatic and ordinary, that changed their writers' lives.
From accepting a job as Hunter S. Thompson's assistant to becoming a single dad, from cancer diagnoses to first kisses, these moments stand as markers of significant change and often of hope. A handful of famous names--Dave Eggers, Elizabeth Gilbert, Melissa Etheridge, Judy Collins--appear alongside dozens of obscure writers, bravely telling their stories in voices bold, distinctive and often quirky. Half a dozen stories appear in illustration or comic-strip form; others began as assignments in high-school writing classes. The most powerful ones neither moralize nor varnish the truth; they simply point to lives split in two by moments ranging from spectacular to devastating to quietly powerful. A few six-word memoirs--and a scattering of longer "moments"--appear at the end of several stories.
The true value of this collection lies in its range of experiences, from riding the rails hobo-style to surviving car crashes to getting that phone call from Oprah. Readers will be moved to consider their own life-changing moments, perhaps even to share them. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams