By Beth Finke
You’ll Laugh. You’ll Cry. You’ll Write.
Writing Out Loud: What a Blind Teacher Learned from Leading a Memoir Class for Seniors is the uplifting true story of what Beth learned about life from the senior citizens in her Chicago memoir-writing courses.
She’s never taught a class in her life. But when the City of Chicago calls on blind writer Beth Finke to teach a memoir-writing class for older adults, she reluctantly agrees. What she learns about her students, their stories, and herself will move and inspire you.
Writing Out Loud: What a Blind Teacher Learned from Leading a Memoir Class for Seniors, Golden Alley Press, 2017
ISBN 978-0-9984429-2-1 print $17.95
ISBN 978-0-9984429-3-8 eBook $ 9.99
Written the way Beth hears life, readers will come to know and love Minerva, Wanda, Hannelore, and the whole colorful cast of characters who build a community around Beth’s classes.
Generously sprinkled with excerpts in her students’ own voices, Beth’s book will convince readers to get their own stories down on paper while there’s still time.
Writing Out Loud includes senior writers’ first-person accounts of a railroad trip to Mississippi in the “Jim Crow” car, a mother-in-law hiding from the Nazis in a Viennese wood, gang mischief in 1940s Chicago, along with Beth’s own adventures getting around the city with her Seeing Eye dog.
If you’ve ever felt frightened by what life asks of you, if you’ve ever had to find your way in the dark, if you are over the age of 60 or love someone who is, this book is for you.
“Honest, lyrical, and funny … a beautifully-felt and deeply moving tribute to the ways sharing life stories can connect us with others, and sometimes, with ourselves.”
— Miriam E. Nelson, Ph.D., bestselling author of Strong Women Stay Young
Beth Finke is an award-winning author, teacher, and journalist. She also happens to be blind. Beth leads memoir-writing classes for older adults in Chicago, Illinois.
