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 [...]

After a trip back to my hometown this spring, where I worked with three classes of sixth graders and Mrs. Nixon’s third graders, which created this amazing six-word memoir book of their own, I was asked to talk to students at my high school in Moorestown, NJ. It’s slightly surreal to return to the place [...]

Across the world, students, teachers, churches, and nonprofits organizations with names like the Hypoparathyroidism Association (devoted to helping folks with a rare medical disorder) have used the six-word memoir to inspire, encourage, and even help heal. We love hearing how six-word memoirs find their way into lives and organizations.
We just heard from the [...]