The Writing Group: A Fable

By Lea Page

The usual five gathered around a table at a local restaurant: Novelist, Historian, and Fabulist—all men—and Poet and Memoirist—both women. Living in a small town in a wide-open state, the pool was limited. How lucky they were, the capable five, to have found each other.

On this day, however, the Historian brought a friend who introduced himself as an autobiographer, not a memoirist. In direct contravention of the rules, the Autobiographer launched into an attack on memoir in...