Fall for the Book Memoirist Event

On Wednesday September 21, I attended the Fall for the Book event featuring two memoirists. The first was Susan McCorkindale whose most well known publication is 500 Acres and No Place to Hide, her story of being uprooted from New York City and transplanted to a Virginia farm. The second was Katherine Russell Rich who shared her stories of a year living in India from her memoir, Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language. The event was at 4:30pm in North Dewberry Hall. When I first arrived I was skeptical about two memoirists reading their work because I kind of assumed that the only people who wrote memoirs about themselves were former public figures who want to write their own history before they die. I was foolish to think this because the moment Susan McCorkindale began to read I was absolutely captivated.

She read from a chapter in her memoir titled “I’d like to have a Word with John Wayne. Calling her a fantastic presenter doesn’t do her justice. I have never enjoyed listening to someone read more. She was absolutely hilarious and I felt like she was having a very one-sided conversation with me. Her story about working on a farm in a “low cut top and shorts” was thoroughly entertaining. Unfortunately, I wasn’t as enthralled by Katherine Russell Rich’s reading. Although her words were carefully crafted and her clever sense of humor shown through, her soft-spoken temperament never stood a chance compared to McCorkindale’s. Regardless I thoroughly enjoyed her story of the societal differences in India, like the fact that there is no word for privacy in India.

This reading far exceeded my expectations and I learned a lot from it. I had no idea that ordinary people wrote memoirs and had them published. On top of that I had absolutely no idea that a memoir could be so entertaining, visually stimulating, and exciting. After attending the event I have been inspired to start writing down things that happen to me everyday, kind of like taking notes for my own personal memoir.