If you’re going to have a summer series on memoirs, there is truly no better person to begin with than the boss of memoir herself, Mary Karr. In 1995, Mary Karr published her debut memoir, “The Liar’s Club,” an engrossing, tragicomic telling of her childhood in a poor, industrial East Texas town. “The Liar’s Club” took the publishing world by storm and inspired a wave of confessional memoirs. Mary then followed it up with “Cherry” in 2000 and “Lit” in 2009. She also wrote a how-to book about the genre called “The Art of Memoir” and is now working on her fourth memoir. In addition to her memoir career, Mary is also the author of five celebrated volumes of poetry and is a longtime professor of English at Syracuse University. And on this episode of Next Question with Katie Couric, Katie and Mary dive into it all: the writing process, books that impacted her life and career, her faith, aging gracefully (or not), even cherished Winnie-the-Pooh poems. It’s such a fun, hilarious and absorbing conversation and a real treat to kick off the summer. Enjoy and make sure to check out Mary Karr’s oeuvre. Links below. 

The Liar’s Club

Cherry

Lit

The Art of Memoir