Musings on children's and YA literature, the academy, and the relationship between them, from an English professor and mother.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Six-Word Memoir Contest!


So here I am in this book with my six-word memoir.* And I'm in some pretty illustrious company, let me tell you! Including at least two fabulous children's authors, Mitali Perkins and Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket). Handler's memoir reads like this: "What? Lemony Snicket? Lemony Snicket? What?"

Now, here are six other memoirs, one of them mine. Match them to the right writers, and you may win your own copy of the book! (If more than one person gets them right, I'll choose a winner at random.) You can leave your answer in the comments or email me (address over on the right, in "About Me"). Get your answers to me by this time next week--Tuesday, February 12 in the early afternoon--and I'll notify the winner as soon as possible. Have fun!

The Memoirs

1. New Jersey to California. Thank God.
2. Fight, work, persevere--gain slight notoriety.
3. Learned reading, writing, forgot arithmetic.
4. Started small, grew, peaked, shrunk, vanished.
5. Here: Macaca! There: American! Where, beloved?
6. Me see world! Me write stories!

The Memoirists:

A. Me!
B. Ayelet Waldman
C. Mitali Perkins
D. Elizabeth Gilbert
E. George Saunders
F. Harvey Pekar


*It's a good thing I've had other things published. Otherwise my new memoir would read: "Finally, I'm published! My name's misspelled." Sigh. Luckily I'm used to it.

7 comments:

  1. Oh my goodness, the book came today to me, too, and I had completely forgotten I had entered ... I'm sure someday something I do online while procrastinating under deadline will come back to haunt me.

    Thanks for this post. I have no idea who the answers belong to, except of course, mine.

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  3. Can I play, even though I know yours and already won a copy through another contest?! (I'm procrastinating wildly here...)

    Here are my guesses:
    1- that's got to be Ayelet Waldman
    2- I'm going to say Eliz. Gilbert, since it echoes the beat of her book title
    3- you
    4- Harvey Pekar
    5 Mitali Perkins
    6- that's very George Saunders

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  4. Mitali, I forgot mine for the longest time...and had to look it up to get it right.

    Thanks for stopping by!

    (this replaces comment #2, which had a stray question mark in it! chalk it up to typing with the flu...)

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  5. So cool, Libby! Congrats :) (And to Mitali too.)

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  6. Libby,

    I'm so, so sorry! Please send me a spelling correction and if (dare to dream) there's a second printing, we'll get it right.

    Best,
    Rachel

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  7. keep playing, folks! Caroline got about half right, in case you want a hint...

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