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

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