Examining Authenticity in Memoir

By Amy Mackin

Authenticity has been at the forefront of my mind over the last year, and I’m clearly not alone. According to Merriam-Webster, “authentic” was one of the most looked-up terms in 2023, leading the company to designate it as their “word of the year.”

Writing memoir demands constant interrogation of authenticity, and it’s within this frame that I continued to re-read and tweak my manuscript even as I pitched this “final” draft to literary agents and editors. The book, which e...