Nancy Shohet West Editorial Consulting & Memoir Services

28/07/2024

It's publication day for Harvard Business School Professor Emeritus Mike Beer! As indicated in the title of his memoir, Mike considers himself the product of three different nationalities: the Germany of his parents; the Palestine in which he spent his childhood during World War II; and America, the land to which he immigrated when he was eleven years old. His memoir begins and ends with glimpses of the Statue of Liberty: one when he first spotted it from the deck of a repurposed military troop carrier after a ten-day transatlantic crossing and the other six decades later when he ducked out of a conference at which he was speaking as an expert in industrial organizational psychology to go sightseeing. It was a complicated project but an extremely worthwhile one, and I'm so glad he chose me as his collaborator!

Born in 1935 in Palestine, Michael Beer was the only child of German Jewish parents who fled Berlin soon after Hitler’s rise to power. As a young child, he saw the world through the lens of his parents' immigrant status and the challenges it posed, not least of which was his father's loss of a ca....

06/07/2024

When my mother was 21, she moved into a fifth-floor apartment in a brownstone in Boston's Back Bay with two other women whom she hadn't previously known. Over the next two years, the three roommates formed fast friendships, embarked on careers, and met their husbands. My father suggested I interview all three of them and write a mini-memoir about that short but meaningful interlude in their lives. The title of the book comes from the brownstone's address, 197 Commonwealth Ave., and in the few weeks since it was published, their children and grandchildren have had a great time learning more about this era and what it meant to them. My daughter was home for only two days but still found time to give it a read!

01/03/2024

Congrats to my memoir client Coach Bob Demayo: 100 copies sold off Amazon in his book's first 9 days in print! (I know it doesn't quite compare to winning five CT state championships, but it's still pretty exciting.....)

20/02/2024

It's publication day for North Haven High School baseball coach Bob DeMayo.....and his wife Bette....AND the nearly 80 players, colleagues, friends and family members who participated in recounting the story of his career as Connecticut's winningest high school baseball coach. 937 wins over 63 seasons for this 91-year-old! What an honor it was for me to work with the whole group in creating this memoir/tribute.

When Robert E. DeMayo retired in 2022 at the age of 89, he was lauded as the winningest high school baseball coach in Connecticut history. With 937 wins over the course of a 63-year career, he led his teams to five state championships and nineteen league championships along with being named both ...

17/02/2024

Today I completed the first interview for a fun new memoir project. From 1961-1962, three young single women shared a fourth-floor walk-up on Commmonwealth Ave in Boston. Although they were roommates for only about a year, they remain the best of friends more than sixty years later. When the husband of one suggested a mini-memoir comprising recollections of all three women as they looked back on that year in Back Bay -- a year full of dates, ski weekends, college classes, jobs, and parties -- they agreed to give it a try! I'm looking forward to learning more about their lives and experiences in order to create a volume that should be entertaining, enlightening and informative for their children, their grandchildren, and generations to come.

03/02/2024

Last April, Manju Sheth and the Women Who Win team approached me about helping them publish a collection of their interviews with successful Indian-American businesswomen, philanthropists, and community leaders. It was an extensive group effort to get to today's publication date, with editorial, administrative and design help from Christine Simpson Lear , Amanda Leahy and Kristine Zards Rencs. Congratulations to Women Who Win team Manju, Deepa and Shaleen!

Struggling to find inspiration in the midst of the 2020 pandemic, three women came up with anidea: create a media platform designed to amplify voices of diverse women across the spectrum of races, cultures, and backgrounds. They named it “Women Who Win" and began inviting women to share their sto....

15/12/2023

Last weekend I had the wonderful experience of attending a photo shoot for models with disabilities. Here's my story about it for this Sunday's Boston Globe.

This photo shoot included faces, bodies, voices, and experiences that reflect all kinds — including those with physical and developmental challenges.

02/12/2023

It's publication day for Captain Rick Hauck! Working on this memoir has been a remarkable experience for me. Rick is a retired Navy pilot and astronaut who flew on three space shuttle missions, two as Commander (including the 1988 "Return to Flight," the first mission following the Challenger tragedy). What a thrilling project this was, from start to finish!

Born into a family with a storied military history, Frederick Hamilton "Rick" Hauck seemed destined from an early age for the career he held as a naval combat and test pilot as well as executive officer of a Navy squadron. But the course of his life and legacy changed when he applied to be a NASA...

30/11/2023

Still a good little gift for the reader, writer, would-be memoirist or generally introspective person in your life!

Why establish a daily writing habit? Because when you give voice to your ideas, fears, hopes, uncertainties, wishes, anxieties and passions, those words that might otherwise circle your mind fruitlessly will find release on the page. The benefits of taking time to turn your thoughts into words in...

19/11/2023

Here's my story in today's Boston Globe about Caroline Kautsire, who emigrated from Malawi as a teen and became an author, actor, director, and professor at Bunker Hill Community College -- where this year her memoir is being featured in its One Book Program! https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/11/19/metro/bunker-hills-one-book-program-celebrates-one-its-own/

23/09/2023

Yesterday a client's memoir went to press after we'd been working together for about eight months. Today his brother called me and said, "My brother told me to call you. He said you helped write his memoir and it was fun and he's glad he did it so I should too." Sometimes the best testimonials come in the plainest language!

21/07/2023

Had a great time interviewing Marcella for this story about her new invention! Online now; in the print version of the Boston Globe this coming Sunday.

Marcella Meyer created the Pickleball Slam game to introduce newcomers to the quirkiness of the hot new sport.

12/07/2023

I'm working on a memoir project with a retired astronaut. His stories about his three space shuttle missions are remarkable! But I'm also working on a memoir with an 86-year-old professor who just described to me what it felt like when his son came out to him in his twenties, and how he and his wife feel looking back at their son's teen years and wishing they had known how to reach out to him earlier. So many extraordinary stories, of so many different kinds.

27/06/2023

Big thanks to The Wardwell for inviting me to their lovely senior residence in S**o, Maine, to talk about memoirs!

27/05/2023

It's publication day for my client, Luella Landis! Although most of the memoir work I do consists of me interviewing people and then writing up their story, occasionally clients come to me who have already written something and just want help turning it into a book, which was the case with Luella. She had been working on this series of nature essays for the past few years. With some design, formatting, and a gorgeous cover from Kristine Rencs, she's done! Congratulations, Luella!

A unique collection of mostly nature-related essays ranging from winning a green canoe and having various canoeing adventures, to childhood memories, to hunting for rare plants in Hawaii and northern New England and much, much more in between, this book, which is illustrated with beautiful photog...

21/05/2023

My story in today's Boston Globe.

18/05/2023

I had a wonderful time discussing approaches to memoir with the residents of Harbor Chase in South Portland!

07/05/2023

Here's my story in today's Boston Globe.

21/04/2023

Parkour for seniors? Yes! My story in this Sunday's Boston Globe.

The sport is flexible enough to adapt to a low-impact version that can benefit seniors in all kinds of ways.

15/04/2023

Typically I work with individual memoir clients, but when the opportunity arises for a community memoir project, I'm always intrigued! Last fall, more than 1,000 volunteers from (or near) Carlisle gathered for 11 days to build a new "Carlisle Castle" -- the iconic playground in the town center. When the project chair asked my collaborator and me to turn their experiences into an anthology, we couldn't say no! Congratulations to all the anthology participants as well as the (much larger) number of construction volunteers!

In early 2021, a small committee of parents, faculty and administrators at the Carlisle Public School began a discussion about rebuilding the beloved but slowly deteriorating Carlisle Castle, the community's iconic playground. To do so would require both money and volunteer labor, but as conversa...

11/04/2023

24/03/2023

It's publication day for Mara J. Briere! Unlike many of my clients, Mara's goal was not so much to recount her whole life as to tell the story of her journey from a child tasked with caring for family members who struggled with mental health concerns to an accomplished professional who founded Grow a Strong Family Inc., a nonprofit devoted to helping families navigate their way to better mental health. Her narrative made for a fascinating mix of personal experience and professional expertise. Congratulations, Mara!

For as long as she can remember, Mara Briere has understood that families are complicated. As a little girl, she had a firsthand view of her grandparents' difficult relationship and her parents' tenuous marriage; while still in grade school she was assigned the responsibility of monitoring the me...

11/03/2023

Here's my story in this weekend's Boston Sunday Globe.

Three years after life changed drastically in households across the country, some adults cling to the habits developed during that time – or wish they could retain just a little bit of that forced tranquility.

09/03/2023

It was such an honor to partner with Affinity Care of Maine, Conroy-Tully Walker Funeral Homes and Sable Lodge Retirement Community earlier this week for a presentation on memoir writing and preserving life stories!