Dear SMITH:
I asked some of my teen patrons as AISD to try the six-word memoir. AISD (American International School/Dhaka) is one of the top international schools with a population of 700 students (Pre-K-12). Our vision is to prepare students to become stewards of a just and sustainable world.
- Judyth Lessee, MS/HS Librarian, AIS/Dhaka, Bangladesh
Here’s what [...]

Summer has a smell, feel, and taste which are all too delicious for an eight-year-old to savor in silence. Ms. Buttiglieri and Ms. Wenning’s third-grade class at Bradford Elementary in Montclair, NJ was bursting at the seams, half-crazed—they needed an outlet that didn’t involve screaming. Paige Kennedy-Piehl stepped in a la Mary Poppins style and [...]

“Too young. Too unaware. Quiet acceptance,” is one six-word memoir from one of Jill Keenan’s students at P.S. 128 high school in Westfield, MA. “My students are awesome,” boasts Keenan, who is clearly doing something right to have such a lovely writer in her classroom. In that spirit, she created a SMITH profile for the [...]

We’ve recently added a “backstory” feature to the Six-Word Memoir project (like a backstory that just came in about turning 50. At Falmouth High School in Falmouth, MA, Christopher Lippa’s students have had the backstory bug for months. “I had about 70 kids write six-word memoirs for this assignment,” the English teacher wrote in to [...]

The six-word memoir has proved to be an unexpectedly elegant and accessible tool for self-expression and personal storytelling. The form is now bigger than Hemingway, and certainly bigger than SMITH. From a reverend in North Carolina who preached six-word prayers, to a midwestern book blogger who created a six-word memoir meme, which still races across [...]

Six-Word Memoirs by Teens book finalist Natalia Jimenez writes:
I heard about this project through writing camp. I spent three weeks of my summer at UVA’s Young Writers’ Workshop, where all of our counselors were obsessed with the idea of six words. The fiction class wrote six word stories. The playwriting class wrote 6 word [...]

Penny Burger,  an eighth-grade language arts Teacher at Central Middle School in Muscatine, Iowa, was searching for a way to teach her students about the power of writing concisely when she stumbled across our six-word memoirs. She brought the concept into the classroom and, to keep it concise, was blown away by the results.
After seeing how [...]

For the last four days, I have done nothing but email teens who are finalists for our upcoming teens-only six-word memoir book. It’s hundreds and hundreds of stories, plus some pictures, some advice, some tough questions, and some secret-sharing of my own. Today, I got a reply informing me that a memoir Larry and I [...]

A few months ago, a strange and wonderful thing found its way to my desk: a box of pretzel croissants from NYC’s City Bakery.
I love pretzel croissants, as I detailed in this interview. Raella Rothman (pictured in the middle, on the right), an enterprising senior at LREI high school in NYC, had put together a [...]

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: nothing brings us more pride and joy when a teacher tells us how a class has taken six words and run with them. Jane Ware teaches second grade in San Ramon, CA and writes: “My second grade class has been writing their 6-Word Memoirs each week and [...]