![Three flowers are below the book title wife/daughter/self on the book cover](https://hippocampusmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/wifedaughterself_cover-web-copy.jpeg)
“Memoir is the life wanting to be transformed. It is the life we have been waiting for.”
[Editor’s note: This essay was excerpted from Beth Kephart’s Aug. 25 opening address at HippoCamp 2018, Hippocampus Magazine’s annual conference for creative nonfiction writers.] We live in a truth-imperiled world. We live among fakers and relativists, liars and cheats, embellishers and subjectivists. We live afraid that the truth could be anything, or will remain forever…