Our Book, Your Book
... and in The New York Times, an explosion of Six-Word expression from teens.
Hot Topic: Six Words on the Pandemic
“The choice to direct this Six-Word Memoir collection at educators, students, and parents trapped in the nightmare of too much togetherness plus too little social contact was inevitable and also genius.”
—The Expendable Mudge
The tenth book of Six-Word Memoirs, A Terrible, Horrible, No Good Year, features hundreds of inspirational, playful, and profound takes on life during the pandemic in words (and incredible illustrations like this gem from Brigid Elber below)
Why buy this book? Well, for one, you support the work of Six Words. But here’s an even better reason: you’d like to give a holiday gift that celebrates teachers to the teachers in your life. Not only will they have a window into the world of other educators during this unprecedented time, but they may even introduce their classes to the joy six-word storytelling.
Here’s what I had to say about all this on a recent segment on NPR.
Make Your Own Classroom Book!
Anyone can write a book. That’s why we’ve created a way for any classroom to make their own Six-Word Memoir book. Making a book to celebrate students’ individual identities and a classroom’s collective spirit is, for starters, a blast. Teachers across the world have found the six-word format to be a terrific tool for social/emotional learning and also a way for students to feel successful. Here’s me talking about why this next chapter in the Six-Word Memoir story is meaningful to me and how teachers can jump in.
Get Your Free Classroom Kit
The New York Times! The Joy of 600+ Teen Readers’ Six-Word Memoirs
We’ve heard you really like to hear how students have processed the pandemic, and wow have the teen readers of The New York Times jumped into our world of Six-Word Memoirs. Inspired by the release of our new book, The New York Times’ The Learning Network section encouraged students to describe these last 606 days in their student opinion challenge, “How Would You Describe Your Pandemic Experience in Six Words?” The column introduces the concept of Six-Word Memoirs and offers readers a range of examples from the book before inviting them to share their own thoughts and join in on the introspective fun.
The piece has received more than 600 comments from wordsmiths and poets, turning the comments section into a veritable mosaic of personal and individual experience. Students talk about their development from young and clueless to wizened youth, the cognitive dissonance of studying in the comfort of their homes, how the serenity of being alone slowly transitioned into the seclusion of loneliness, and more. The shared experiences of these memoirists is heartwarming and shows that even when the world is forced to shut down, the conversations we have light the way.
New SixContest: Your Unique Family in Six Words
“A family of wannabe Jeopardy contestants.” — catsmeow
“We hide booze from Uncle John.” — jl333
“A warm home, and warmer hugs.” — Izzy_H
Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and although the pandemic has put a wrench in traditional plans, many of us are looking forward to a safe family gathering. For SixContest #141, we'd like you to write a memoir about what makes your family unique.
Tell us about a peculiar tradition passed down through the generations or a tradition that you've recently instituted. Family doesn't have to be related by blood; often we create our own "found family" among our friends and communities. How did you discover your family? And what sort of crazy shenanigans are you anticipating between bites of pumpkin pie?
Make sure to submit your memoir on the contest page of Six-Word Memoirs for a chance to win a Six-Word Memoir book of your choice!
Short Cuts: Six-Word Reviews
From Substack: Journalist Jessica DeFino is aware of how the beauty industry cakes itself with misleading “truths” to hide its blemished motives. DeFino uses unique storytelling methods to turn mundane facts into eye-opening narratives on The Unpublishable, a no-nonsense platform that educates her audience on how they’re being made to feel about their bodies. From manipulative beauty rhetorics to “The Don’t Buy List,” The Unpublishable covers just that: unpublishable topics filtered through the funnel of seemingly well-intentioned beauty advertising.
Six-Word Memoirs' Ayusha Mahajan's Six-Word Review: “Forthright journalist scrutinizes rosied beauty matrix.”
From the World: “I feel the older I grow, the more clearly I understand that that’s what we are: our stories. We erase our stories, we erase our existence. And learning how to tell the stories, learning how to understand the stories is really the essence of our existence here.” So says Marilyn Nelson, Chancellor Emeritus of the Academy of American Poets, as part of a soul-opening conversation on the Peabody award-winning public radio show and podcast, On Being With Krista Tippett.
Joining Nelson and host Tippet is Pádraig Ó Tuama, poet and host of the podcast Poetry Unbound.. At its core, any On Being segment is about what it means to be human. This particular conversation reminds us how the power of stories — to reveal, to connect, to challenge — helps us make sense of this tricky time and the unknown times that await us.
Larry’s Six-Word Review: “Stopping to smell and swallow stories.”