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Melanie Brooks

Melanie Brooks is the author of Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (Beacon Press, 2017). She teaches professional writing at Northeastern University and narrative medicine in the MFA program at Bay Path University in Massachusetts and creative writing at Nashua Community College in New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Psychology Today, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, The Huffington Post, and Creative Nonfiction. She is completing a memoir called A Hard Silence about the lasting impact of living with the ten-year secret of her father’s HIV disease before his death in 1995. She lives in New Hampshire with her husband, two children, and two Labs.

By Melanie Brooks

How Memoirist Julia McKenzie Munemo Reckoned With Her Family’s Racist History

by Melanie Brooks

When her memoir, The Book Keeper, launched on January 14, 2020, Julia McKenzie Munemo did not know that exactly two months later, when the lockdown began and the world shuttered against the Covid-19 pandemic, her book tour would come to an abrupt halt. Neither could she have anticipated that the deaths of three Black Americans—Breonna Taylor,

Winter 2021

Making a Memoir: Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s Journey to Write The Fact of a Body

by Melanie Brooks

I have a confession: sometimes when I get to the end of a book, I reflect on something about the author’s approach or treatment of the content, and I think, I could have totally done that. However, when I finished Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich’s captivating memoir, The Fact of a Body, and considered the intricate braid that layers the story

Summer 2018

In Remembrance

by Melanie Brooks

After two days of gray skies, unseasonably cold temperatures, and on-and-off rain showers, the sun finally makes an appearance on this Monday of the long weekend. The warmth and light draw more of Nashua, New Hampshire’s residents than usual from our suburban homes to line the edges of Main Street. Children squeeze together along the

Summer 2016

Organizing Chaos: A Candid Conversation with Joan Wickersham About Her Memoir, The Suicide Index: Putting My Father’s Death In Order

by Melanie Brooks

Two years ago, I began writing a memoir about a hard family story. In 1985, my father, a physician, was infected with HIV as a result of a blood transfusion. He kept his illness secret from everyone outside our family until only months before his death ten years later. Writing about this part of my

Summer 2015

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