This week is memoir week at Slate. The online magazine frequently has week-long themes about books or genres.

Over the next three days, our critics will be weighing in on new memoirs. What has been most striking to us at Slate is how many memoirs these days are anything but coming-of-age stories; instead, they tackle issues and subjects larger than the self. We’ll also offer a series of short essays by memoirists on the experience of publishing a book about their lives.

Today’s installment delves into an issue that I have already been worried about in my brief, barely published phase: the other people who aren’t you but are in your story. Alison Bechdel, author of “Fun Home,” talks about breaking the news that she was writing a memoir to her mother. Mary Karr, author of “The Liar’s Club,” discusses her friends’ reactions to the fact that she was writing a memoir about her childhood.

To date, I have published one story that was non-journalistic but based on reality. It involved me and a bunch of strangers I will never see again who are unlikely to read the story. But I have many stories about my family that, when finished, I would like to publish. I am worried about it. And these are humorous stories. I can’t imagine what writers who delve into abuse or dysfunction have to deal with when they publish true, ugly stories.

I think it’s ethical to tell people you plan to write about them, but what if they tell you they don’t want you to? What do you do?

-Marcia

Hiya. I will be going to this on March 21 if any of the Word Pirates want to come along.

~ Joy

The San Francisco Bay Area claims the highest concentration of literary journals in the United States, publishing hundreds of new works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction each year.

Editors read thousands of manuscripts, culling the pieces that will define their publications. Many writers who publish in literary journals go on to publish books, win awards, and establish careers. At the least—we hope—they keep writing.

But what about the editors?

Does it pay? Is it hard? Does it hurt? Are they crazy?

Meet the editors.

Del Ray Cross, Shampoo
Eli Horowitz, McSweeney’s
Howard Junker, Zyzzyva
Liz Lisle, Watchword
Michelle Richmond, Fiction Attic
Jason Snyder, Sidebrow
Chad Sweeney, Parthenon West Review
Eric Zassenhaus, Instant City

“The continuing importance of literary journals”
Panel moderator:
Jenny Pritchett, Fourteen Hills

Wednesday, March 21, 2007
7:30 p.m.

The Poetry Center
Humanities Building, Room 512
San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue
San Francisco, CA 94132
Map: http://tinyurl.com/349uy9

Esquire magazine did something totally awesome. I wish I had thought of it. Then again, I am not a famous old magazine, so my attempt would not have been as successful. Here’s what Esquire did:

We put 250 napkins in the mail to writers from all over the country — some with a half dozen books to their name, others just finishing their first. In return, we got nearly a hundred stories.

Esquire got napkins back from the likes of ZZ Packer, Aimee Bender, Rick Moody,Madison Smartt Bell, A.M Homes, and more! Some wrote short stories. Some wrote silly little things that may be inside jokes or stray ideas. Some wrote letters. But a lot of different kinds of writers sent napkins back to Esquire.
A couple of the writers used the napkin concept as a “prompt” such as Jack Livings’ letter of complaint about a waiter to the restaurant management or Christopher Sorrentino’s letter to a bartender from a paper-products salesman.

Check out the project here.

-Marcia