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.
