Today I am excited to welcome an author I admire, Joan Steinau Lester, whose new memoir LOVING BEFORE LOVING: A Marriage in Black and White will be out on May 18. I will attend her virtual reading in Oakland. Join us to celebrate Joan’s extraordinary love story and support our local bookstores!

Joan Steinau Lester is an award-winning commentator, columnist, and author of critically acclaimed books, including Mama's Child and Black, White, Other. Her writing has appeared in such publications as USA Today, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, Cosmopolitan, and Huffington Post.

Joan Steinau Lester's Website - www.joanlester.com
Joan Steinau Lester's Blog - www.joanlester.com/blog

Writing Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White

If I had a nickel for each time a stranger has told me, “I know my life would be a bestseller!” I’d be wealthy. Sometimes they even offer their story, asking me to simply write it down. “My life has been so amazing, the book would write itself.”

Well, not really. Books do not write themselves, and the record of lives is not laid out like a script, awaiting only transcription. A memoir, like any other book, is a deliberately created piece of art, using, in this case, one’s life as the clay. But there are endless possibilities for shaping the raw material. What is the theme? The voice? Which events to include, which to highlight, how to connect them all? And why now?