Why add the art?Īs with most of what happens in a passionate community, I took the lead of the people in it. This is the first illustrated memoir you’ve done. Click the image to see The Washington Post‘s slideshow. Chef Mario Batali certainly did when he wrote, “Brought it to a boil often.” Others try to capture one aspect of their life such as, “According to Facebook we broke up” or “Mom’s Alzheimer’s: she forgets, I remember.” At its core, Six-Word Memoir projects takes a basic human need-self-expression-and makes it accessible, easy and often quite addictive.įrom Elizabeth Mappus, a junior at the Academic Magnet High School in North Charleston, S.C. Think of it as the title of your autobiography or epitaph on your tombstone. Those six words can be an attempt to sum up your whole life. The idea is as simple as it sounds: tell the story of your life in exactly six words. So in November 2006, we partnered with a little-known company called Twitter for what was then supposed to be a one-month contest to win an iPod. Others had played with the idea of the six-word story form before, but I and my storytelling community, SMITH Magazine, re-imagined it. He wrote: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” I was inspired by that. There’s a legend that Ernest Hemingway was once challenged to write a story in only six words. How did the idea for Six-Word emoirs come about? So below, we asked Larry Smith all about how Six-Word Memoirs came to be. Today, the Washington Post features a slideshow of just a few of the mini-memoirs and images from the book. The result is the evocative and often moving Things Don’t Have To Be Complicated: Illustrated Six-Word Memoirs By Students Making Sense of the World. Smith put out the call for students - ranging from grade school to graduate school - to contribute illustrated Six-Word Memoirs. He has just published his latest edition as a TED Book, and added a special twist: artwork. Think you can summarize it into a half-dozen carefully crafted words? Larry Smith thinks you can, and created the popular ‘ Six-Word Memoir‘ project, that challenges contributors to make us pause, reflect and even laugh. Pause for a moment and imagine the grand, confusing and ultimately exhilarating drama that is the sweep of your life.

6 word memoir