The Importance of “Personal Story”

By Julie Ryan McGue

In the fall of 2017, I was in the hot seat. Several chapters of my memoir were up for critique before a writer’s group I had joined through the University of Chicago Writer’s Studio. Prior to the session, I’d emailed my classmates a synopsis of my work-in-progress and twelve pages of material from the midpoint of my adoption search journey. The chapters dealt with the pivotal moment when my birth mother denied contact with me. While this section of the memoir had been p...