Why am I passionate about this?

From a very early age, I was interested in both magical stories (untrue) and life writing (true). As a writer, I love combining the two. In both fairy tales and memoirs, somebody goes into the woods and comes out wiser. At both Harvard and Oxford, I teach writing courses on Mythic Memoir. I tell my two children as many fairy tales as I know, and then I make up more. In 2022 I published my first collection of personal essays, Awake with Asashoryu, eleven short memoirs from my life, each with a myth or fairy tale at the heart.


I wrote

Awake with Asashoryu and Other Essays

By Elisabeth Sharp McKetta,

Book cover of Awake with Asashoryu and Other Essays

What is my book about?

In the words of one of my reviewers and former teachers, Kyoko Mori, “Awake with Asashoryu is a lyrical…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of In the Dream House: A Memoir

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Why did I love this book?

The author, who visited one of my classes this past spring (a thrill for us all!), writes about an abusive love affair in a series of short prose-poem-style vignettes about what happens when a relationship falls short of our romantic fantasies. I love she draws in creepy fairy tales such as “Bluebeard,” among other made-up stories with true emotional cores. 

By Carmen Maria Machado,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked In the Dream House as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'Ravishingly beautiful' Observer
'Excruciatingly honest and yet vibrantly creative' Irish Times
'Provocative and rich' Economist
'Daring, chilling, and unlike anything else you've ever read' Esquire
'An absolute must-read' Stylist

WINNER OF THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE 2021

In the Dream House is Carmen Maria Machado's engrossing and wildly innovative account of a relationship gone bad. Tracing the full arc of a harrowing experience with a charismatic but volatile woman, this is a bold dissection of the mechanisms and cultural representations of psychological abuse.

Each chapter views the relationship through a different lens, as Machado holds events up to the light and…


Book cover of The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood Among Ghosts

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Why did I love this book?

A list like this cannot be complete without Kingston, who uses in her book a literary technique called “perhapsing”—defined by Lisa Knopp as “the use of speculation in creative nonfiction”—in which Kingston uses myth and the question “what if” to imagine what might’ve happened in the stories she half-knows about her family. 

By Maxine Hong Kingston,

Why should I read it?

7 authors picked The Woman Warrior as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • NATIONAL BESTSELLER • With this book, the acclaimed author created an entirely new form—an exhilarating blend of autobiography and mythology, of world and self, of hot rage and cool analysis. First published in 1976, it has become a classic in its innovative portrayal of multiple and intersecting identities—immigrant, female, Chinese, American. 

“A classic, for a reason” – Celeste Ng via Twitter

As a girl, Kingston lives in two confounding worlds: the California to which her parents have immigrated and the China of her mother’s “talk stories.” The fierce and wily women warriors of…


Book cover of Save Me The Waltz

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Why did I love this book?

Technically a novel, but rooted so specifically in the details of Zelda’s life that her family members all recognized themselves and their town in her writing. A surrealist and poetic coming-of-age story written by the wife of Jazz Age writer F. Scott Fitzgerald during an eight-week period when she was living in a mental hospital. An imperfect and fascinating way to narrate a life.

By Zelda Fitzgerald,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Save Me The Waltz as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Why did I love this book?

I only just learned about this book, and I am currently deep in it. It is a magical story about history and family through the lens of trying to piece together the story of a collection of objects. In fairy tales, objects carry enchantments, and de Waal nods to that tradition. This memoir is part detective story, part history tour, and fully a beautiful memoir filled with its own magic. 

By Edmund de Waal,

Why should I read it?

8 authors picked The Hare with Amber Eyes as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

**THE NUMBER ONE SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER**

**WINNER OF THE COSTA BIOGRAPHY AWARD**

264 wood and ivory carvings, none of them bigger than a matchbox: Edmund de Waal was entranced when he first encountered the collection in his great uncle Iggie's Tokyo apartment. When he later inherited the 'netsuke', they unlocked a story far larger and more dramatic than he could ever have imagined.

From a burgeoning empire in Odessa to fin de siecle Paris, from occupied Vienna to Tokyo, Edmund de Waal traces the netsuke's journey through generations of his remarkable family against the backdrop of a tumultuous century.

'You…


Book cover of Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit

Elisabeth Sharp McKetta Why did I love this book?

A slender, lovely book about a difficult childhood, told across eight chapters that are named after books in the Bible. Winterson is always first a poet, and she brings old stories into the light in wholly new ways. A gorgeous coming-of-age story about the uphill journey to becoming oneself.

By Jeanette Winterson,

Why should I read it?

6 authors picked Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Key Features:



Study methods
Introduction to the text
Summaries with critical notes
Themes and techniques
Textual analysis of key passages
Author biography
Historical and literary background
Modern and historical critical approaches
Chronology
Glossary of literary terms


Explore my book 😀

Awake with Asashoryu and Other Essays

By Elisabeth Sharp McKetta,

Book cover of Awake with Asashoryu and Other Essays

What is my book about?

In the words of one of my reviewers and former teachers, Kyoko Mori, “Awake with Asashoryu is a lyrical book about learning to live in kindness and beauty.”

Each of these essays tells a story from my life as a way to think about the question of how we grow up without losing ourselves. Whether loving and ultimately having to put down a badly-behaved corgi, or misbehaving during a family vacation, or staying up late watching sumo wrestling with my dad, the core question of the essays is the same: how we become. 

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A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue

By Dean Jobb,

Book cover of A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue

Dean Jobb Author Of The Case of the Murderous Dr. Cream: The Hunt for a Victorian Era Serial Killer

New book alert!

Why am I passionate about this?

Author True crime author Journalist Professor Reader

Dean's 3 favorite reads in 2023

What is my book about?

The Great Gatsby meets Catch Me If You Can and the hit Netflix series Lupin in this rollicking true tale of an audacious gentleman crook.

Arthur Barry, one of the world's most successful jewel thieves, charmed the elite of 1920s New York City, swiped gems worth $60 million today from their posh country estates, and outfoxed the police and private detectives on his trail. His victims included a Rockefeller, an oil tycoon, members of Britain’s royal family, Wall Street bigwigs, and an heiress to the Woolworth five-and-dime store fortune. This tale of wealth, glamor, and deception, a charming and debonair…

A Gentleman and a Thief: The Daring Jewel Heists of a Jazz Age Rogue

By Dean Jobb,

What is this book about?

This captivating Jazz Age true crime tale about "the greatest jewel thief who ever lived" (Life Magazine), tells the incredible story of Arthur Barry, who charmed celebrities and millionaires while simultaneously planning and executing the most audacious and lucrative heists of the 1920s.

A skilled con artist and one of the most successful burglars in history, Arthur Barry was adept at slipping in and out of bedrooms undetected, even when his victims slept only inches away. He became a folk hero, a gentleman bandit touted in the press as the "Prince of Thieves" and an "Aristocrat of Crime." Think Cary…


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