Craft & Editing
On demand
Free
60 minutes
Memoir and the people in it: legal and ethical ground rules
What to consider before writing about real people, and where the line between a legal question and an ethical one falls.
- 7:00pm EDT
- Elena Marsh
Video slot embed the recording here
About this session
Memoirists write about people who did not ask to be in a book. This session covers how to think about that.
We cover the difference between legal risk and ethical discomfort, when a legal read is worth arranging, the practical options naming, composites, changed details, telling people beforehand and how other memoirists have handled it.
This is a discussion of considerations, not legal advice. For a specific situation, take specific advice from a qualified lawyer in your jurisdiction.
What you will take away
- How to think about naming versus disguising real people
- When a pre-publication legal read is worth arranging
- How other memoirists have handled difficult material
Elena Marsh
Senior Fiction Editor
Part of the working team at Winfrey Publishing sessions are run by people who do the job, not by a marketing department.
