Share
Tell your story, in a book your family can hold.
Some families have the pictures and need the stories written beside them. Some have the story and need someone to sit down, ask the right questions and write it properly. That's the difference between a Memory Book and a Memoir — and either one keeps the story familiar long after the people who told it best are gone.
Two ways to do it
Which one is yours?
One leads with your photographs. The other leads with the telling. Both end as a bound book.
Memory Book
- Leads with
- Your photographs, documents and keepsakes
- Supported by
- Captions and stories gathered through a questionnaire you share with family and friends
- Pilot sizes
- 20, 30 or 40 pages
Memoir
- Leads with
- Guided interviews and the story you want told
- Supported by
- Selected photographs and documents used as supporting material
- Pilot sizes
- 40, 50 or 60 pages
Memory Book
Your photographs and keepsakes, with the stories written beside them.
A Memory Book brings your photographs, documents and keepsakes together in one bound book, with captions and short stories written beside them. The people in the pictures get named, the places get explained, and the family stories that usually live in someone's head get written down — so the story stays familiar long after the people who told it best are gone.
Pilot sizes: 20 pages · 30 pages · 40 pages
For the pilot, plan on roughly one usable item for each page you choose — about 20 items for a 20-page book, 30 for 30 pages, 40 for 40. Photographs, documents, letters, certificates, newspaper clippings and photographed keepsakes all count. We select and arrange them together; not every item ends up in the book.
- 1
You submit or upload your content — photographs, documents, keepsakes, whatever tells the story. If some of it is still in a hard format like prints or tapes, we'll first digitize it through one of our preservation packages so it's ready for the book.
- 2
I go through what you've shared and prepare your Questionnaire: real questions about your material — who this is, where this was, what was happening.
- 3
Share the Questionnaire with as many family members, friends or co-workers as you like. Their answers — names, captions, corrections, the story behind a picture — come back to me. Each request carries a Must Be Returned By date, and answers that arrive after it may not make the book.
- 4
I design the book around your content and the questionnaire responses that came back, and it goes to print.
Memoir
A family story told in words, from guided interviews.
A Memoir is written mainly from conversation. We sit down for guided interviews, you tell the story you want kept, and I write it as a flowing family narrative — with selected photographs and documents used throughout as supporting material rather than as the main event.
You point the compass toward the story you want told. My questions are there to draw out what the subject means to you — the sentimental value, and the historical and communal significance — along with the small memories families forget they know until someone asks.
Pilot sizes: 40 pages · 50 pages · 60 pages
For the pilot, a Memoir also needs supporting material — one piece of content for every four pages: about 10 usable photographs or documents for a 40-page book, 13 for 50 pages, and 15 for 60.
- Two guided interview sessions are included, up to 60 minutes each.
- Up to three people in an interview at a time. A session can be split — 30 minutes with one group, 30 with another — so more people get to take part.
- More interview time can be added in 30-minute increments; I'll confirm that with you before we schedule it.
In our interview space
A dedicated Memory Box interview and voice-recording space is being set up in Washington. Location details come with your scheduling once it's ready.
Google Meet
Good when family are spread out, or when travel would be hard on someone.
Come to you
At home, at a family member's house, or at a care facility. Travel inside Washington city limits is included; beyond the city-limit line it's $0.72 per mile for the miles outside it, round trip.
After each interview, you'll review the notes taken from it and approve them before any writing begins — and for 24 hours after the interview you can call with corrections or requests about anything that was said.
There's no full-story review before publishing. Instead, the writing leans heavily on the details you've approved, and every finished story is proofread and cross-checked by two people on two separate days — so what's on the page is true to what you told me, and told beautifully.
Little Life Stories
One family story, written for children and originally illustrated.
A Little Life Story takes one true family story and shapes it into an illustrated keepsake written for children, made with a selected professional artist. It can begin from a memory, an interview, your photographs and documents, or a story you've already had written.
- 1
An unhurried conversation, recorded so nothing is lost
- 2
The story written for young readers, with your family's own words kept in
- 3
Original illustration with a selected professional artist — from your photographs if you have them, from what you remember if you don't
- 4
Your review, then a finished little book to hand to someone
Length, format and pricing are confirmed with you before we begin.
These aren't either/or. Many families preserve the photographs in a Memory Book, keep the longer telling in a Memoir, and turn one favorite moment into a Little Life Story for the children — and any one of them is a fine place to begin.
Also available
Open When QR Memory Cards
A small card for a future moment — graduation day, a hard week, a wedding morning — that opens onto a message, a photograph or a voice you recorded for them.