Mimi Schwartz is an award-winning, socially conscious memoirist and essayist who crafts personal experiences into compelling narratives. Her recent books include When History Is Personal (2018); Good Neighbors, Bad Times: Echoes of My Father’s German Village (2008); Thoughts from a Queen-Sized Bed (2002); and Writing True: The Art and Craft of Creative Nonfiction, co-authored with Sondra Perl. Her short work has appeared in Agni, Creative Nonfiction, The Writer’s Chronicle, Calyx, Prairie Schooner, Tikkun, The New York Times and The Missouri Review, among others. A recipient of the Foreword Book of the Year Award in Memoir and the New Hampshire Outstanding Literary Nonfiction Award, Mimi’s essays have been widely anthologized and nine have been Notables in the Best American Essays Series. She is Professor Emerita in writing at Richard Stockton University and gives talks and creative writing workshops nationwide and abroad.
Books
Praise for When History is Personal
“Perfect pitch, impeccable observation, penetrating insight…A fresh and vivid approach to many dominant themes long cherished by American writers—the dynamics of remembering and forgetting, the significance of place, the conflict of individuals and institutions, the inseparability of past and present.” —Robert Atwan, series editor of Best American Essays
“How do you write personal history—memoir—without narcissism? I watch Mimi Schwartz do it with sheer enjoyment. In a world racked by conflict, Schwartz is a clear-eyed advocate of storytelling that connects things with their supposed opposites.” —Alicia Ostriker, author of Waiting for the Light
“[Schwartz’s] writing is vivid and compelling, but also something more, a re-substantiation of lives that mattered, a testament. Brava!” —Richard Hoffman, author of Half the House
“This is creative nonfiction at its finest.” —Nancy Sommers, Harvard University
Upcoming Events
2018
January 13
Creative Writing Sampler—Memoir Workshop
Winter Poetry and Prose Getaway
Seaview Hotel, Absecon, NJ
March 10
Beyond the I: How Research Enlarges Personal Narrative
AWP Conference
Tampa, FL
March 14
Reading and Conversation with Mimi Schwartz
Literati Bookstore at 7 p.m.
Ann Arbor, MI
March 24
“Beyond the I: When Memoir Meets History”
New Hampshire Writers’ Project
Southern New Hampshire University
The Ford House at 1-4 p.m.
Hooksett, New Hampshire
Mimi Schwartz 