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Behind the Books
Biography:
• SARA BARD FIELD
SARA AND ERSKINE, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE (in progress) is about a search for love that turned a Baptist minister's wife into a nationally known suffragist, a California poet, and an "anarchist and free-lover."
• Excerpts from the working draft are posted in the StoryDriven.Net JOURNAL. (Temporarily offline .)
• DAUGHTER OF PERSIA
A timely, riveting account of the life and work of an extraordinary Iranian aristocrat and social reformer, Sattareh Farman Farmaian, DAUGHTER OF PERSIA is both memoir and historical journalism, opening a personal window on Iran and America's involvement in the six tumultuous decades that laid the foundations of the crisis facing the United States and the West today.
• REVIEWERS on DAUGHTER OF PERSIA
What critics, Middle East experts, writers, and general readers have said about Daughter of Persia.
• A READER'S GUIDE to DAUGHTER OF PERSIA
Article: "Finding Our Voice." Discovering the right literary "voice" for Daughter of Persia.
For Reading Groups:
• A Writer's Perspective on Daughter of Persia Reading Group Questions.
• Reading Recommendations. A personal selection.
• Especially for biographers:
LINKS and RECOMMENDATIONS
Help me build a cache. Let me know about your favorite books on writing biography and any other websites you've found on writing biography or biographical nonfiction. • Also on this page: Recommended guides for writing a biography book proposal.
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• Welcome to WRITING BIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHICAL NONFICTION, a personal and professional website that explores how literary imagination and research combine to create a story about a life.
WRITING BIOGRAPHY AND BIOGRAPHICAL NONFICTION, a.k.a. StoryDriven.Net, is about constructing a persuasive, engaging biographical narrative and is a resource for biographers and professional nonfiction writers and researchers, advanced students and teachers of nonfiction writing, and others who may be writing or considering writing book-length biographical nonfiction. StoryDriven.Net is also for general readers interested in the mental processes and work lives of writers.
( Tip: If you went to " www.storydriven.com" instead of " .net" before coming here, you went to the wrong place. But you knew that already.)
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• NEWSLETTER: IMAGINING A LIFE AND THE CRAFT OF BIOGRAPHY.
From time to time I post articles exploring the writing, research, thought processes, and practical problems all biographers encounter in building a story. These appear in a free e-mail NEWSLETTER. For a list of articles, please go to the INDEX. All are available in the ARCHIVE on that page, as well as automatically to subscribers.
Subscribing to the NEWSLETTER is simple and requires no registration or personal information. Click here to learn more.
• THE STORYDRIVEN.NET JOURNAL. (Temporarily offline.)
•To illustrate one writer's approach to building a biographical narrative (and for fun), occasionally I also post excerpts from an in-progress biography, SARA AND ERSKINE, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE in the StoryDriven.Net JOURNAL: Excerpts from a Life of Sara Bard Field. I welcome feedback and hope that you'll E-MAIL ME sometime.
• More about writing biography and biographical nonfiction on StoryDriven.net.
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 About DONA MUNKER:
• Dona Munker is a writer and former college English teacher and trade book editor with a special interest in the narrator's art and the imagination of the nonfiction storyteller. (Click here for more.)
• Her previous book was DAUGHTER OF PERSIA: A Woman's Journey from Her Father's Harem through the Islamic Revolution, an account of the life and work of Sattareh Farman Farmaian. At present, Dona is at work on SARA AND ERSKINE, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, a biography of the World War One-era poet and suffragist Sara Bard Field and her long love affair with the attorney Charles Erskine Scott Wood. She is reconstructing this story from thousands of letters written by the couple and those around them, and from a massive oral history, SARA BARD FIELD: Poet and Suffragist. SARA AND ERSKINE is under contract to Doubleday.
•In addition to writing and researching SARA AND ERSKINE, from time to time Dona speaks about what she does to writing students, book clubs, and other groups. She also conducts a half-day WORKSHOP, "Writing a Biography Book Proposal." For more information, please E-MAIL her.
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About WRITING BIOGRAPHY on StoryDriven.net:
• The StoryDriven.Net NEWSLETTER: IMAGINING A LIFE AND THE CRAFT OF BIOGRAPHY. Free e-mail newsletter focusing on the pleasures, challenges, and practical problems of imagining a life and writing narrative in biographical nonfiction. It often discusses a specific problem and solution suggested by a selection on the JOURNAL page. The NEWSLETTER also announces new JOURNAL postings. Go to the NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE or SUBSCRIBE.
• The StoryDriven.Net JOURNAL: Excerpts from a Life of Sara Bard Field. (Temporarily offline.) Short selections from SARA AND ERSKINE, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, a biography in progress about the California poet, suffragist, and "free-lover," Sara Bard Field, a Baptist minister's wife who fell in love with the married attorney and philosophical anarchist, Charles Erskine Scott Wood. I am reconstructing Sara Bard Field's story from thousands of letters, as well as from her own massive oral autobiography.
• VISITORS. Send feedback about the JOURNAL entry, writing or researching biography, or anything else on this website. Or E-MAIL ME.
ALSO:
• "Finding Our Voice."© The process of creating a narrative voice for the book, DAUGHTER OF PERSIA.
• Dona Munker. Professional interests and activities, plus information about a workshop on WRITING A BIOGRAPHY BOOK PROPOSAL. For more information, E-MAIL DONA MUNKER.
• LINKS and RECOMMENDATIONS. Websites of interest for biographers; useful books.
• Site Map
• Contact Me
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Picture credits:
Center column: Author photo by Hiroko Yoshimoto. • Sidebar: Sara Bard Field and C.E.S. Wood by W. E. Dassonville; reproduced with permission of the Regional Oral History Office, Bancroft Library, University of California Berkeley.
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Notice of Copyright:
• All material on this website copyright © 2005-2008 by Dona Munker, except where expressly stated or contributed by others. Copying, altering, or reproducing this material in any form without written permission is prohibited by law and may be prosecuted regardless of the venue or purpose of the copying.
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• The StoryDriven.Net NEWSLETTER: Imagining a Life and the Craft of Biography is a resource for practicing biographers, journalists, students, teachers, researchers, and readers. It examines the pleasures, challenges, and problems of imagining a life and constructing a narrative in biography and biographical nonfiction. It can be read either by going to the NEWSLETTER ARCHIVE or by E-MAIL SUBSCRIPTION.
• Getting the NEWSLETTER by e-mail is easy and free of charge. Just enter your e-mail address in the SIGNUP BOX on that page, activate the confirmation message you'll receive, and you're all set.
• Each NEWSLETTER focuses on one facet of researching, envisioning, and writing biographical narrative, often through a discussion of the current entry in the StoryDriven.Net JOURNAL: Excerpts from a Life of Sara Bard Field (temporarily offline). The NEWSLETTER also announces new JOURNAL excerpts, which appear at intervals (i.e., as I have time to post them).
• To see a list of archived articles, please go to the INDEX.
Read the StoryDriven.Net JOURNAL: Excerpts from a Life of Sara Bard Field. (Temporarily offline.)
Sara Bard Field with Charles Erskine Scott Wood in 1920, after their "free union" on San Francisco's Russian Hill. SARA AND ERSKINE, AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, a biography of Sara Bard Field is under contract to Doubleday.
• Excerpts from the working draft are posted in the the StoryDriven.Net JOURNAL. (Temporarily offline.)
• "Lyrical and enchanting....Beautifully written." —The New York Times Book Review. |
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