Somewhere tonight, at a kitchen table after the house has gone quiet, someone is writing about their mother. Or the farm they grew up on, or the year everything fell apart, or the country their grandparents left. If that someone is in your life, or perhaps it is you, you may be wondering what to give them, or hints to give others for yourself, this Christmas. The best gifts for someone writing a memoir aren’t the obvious ones, and after thirty years of teaching writers how to turn their lives into stories, I have a few firm opinions.

Why gifts for someone writing a memoir are different

First, memoir is the most exposed form of writing there is. A novelist can hide behind invented characters; a memoirist puts their own family, their own mistakes and their own grief on the page, and then has to decide who gets to read it. That makes memoir writers unusually hungry for two things: a reader they can trust, and proof that someone takes the project seriously.

So the most meaningful gifts are the ones that say, quietly, I believe this story is worth telling.

Books that belong on every memoirist’s shelf

Next, start with Hua Hsu’s Stay True. In this book, Hsu does what the best memoirs do: lets the long arm of Time reveal not just what happened, but what it all meant. It is elegant and wise, and can empower writers reflecting on rhythms of their own lives to find the most meaningful insights in their narratives. There is a difference in writing just about what happened and what the story is really about. Pair it with Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir, which is funny and full of hard-won advice about memory, truth and family. Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of Craft is inspiring and candid as well.

For inspiration rather than instruction, give them a memoir that shows what the form can do. My Level 1 Art of Narrative Nonfiction students read Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings alongside a range of personal essays, and every term someone tells me it changed how they understood their own material. I pull titles from the Pulitzer Prize list and have recently read and closely studied Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li and Barbarian Day: A Surfing Memoir by William Finnegan.

The gift of a close reader

And so here is what I have learned from reading thousands of pages of memoir: most people writing about their lives are working entirely alone, and they cannot see their own work clearly. They are too close to it. The need community. The scene that matters most gets a single line; the one that doesn’t gets three pages.

A course gives them what they can’t give themselves. In my memoir courses, students learn the same Eight Pillars that underpin all narrative nonfiction, including presence, arc, character, voice and setting, applied to the particular challenge of writing a life. Classes are capped at sixteen, and I respond to every student’s pages in my own hand, in the margins. Students tell me that handwritten feedback, more than anything else, is what changed their writing.

For someone further along, deep in a manuscript, one-to-one mentoring offers sustained attention to the whole book. And for the memoirist who dreams of publication, my book proposal course begins on 17 January and ends with a proposal ready to send to agents. For a one-hour consultation called Inspire Hour, I listen, brainstorm, and offer concrete routes and feedback people find helpful and meaningful in their writing journeys.

How to give a memoir course as a gift

Because memoir is so personal, I’d suggest letting the writer choose. My writing course gift vouchers can be spent on any course, masterclass, mentoring or retreat. Each is printed on a card, signed by hand and sent by post, so there is something real to give on the day. Please order by December 18 for Christmas delivery.

Smaller gifts for someone writing a memoir

Not every gift needs to be large. A box of old family photographs, labelled with names and dates, can unlock a whole chapter. So can a recorded conversation with an older relative, or a visit together to the house or town at the centre of the story. And perhaps the simplest gift of all: ask to read a chapter, and then talk about it properly.

For more ideas, see my full guide to gifts for writers.