This Small Business Saturday, support The Birren Center with a purchase from our Birren Center collection!

Our latest anthology, Second Chances: Lives Change, One Story at a Time makes an excellent gift for anyone who enjoys true stories, well told.

I serve as the secretary of the board of The Birren Center. I was also the program manager for this year’s anthology book production. I led volunteer teams as we selected the theme, publicized it to our instructor community to encourage their students to write, reviewed submissions (including some in Spanish), selected 56 for inclusion, then edited and produced a beautiful book.

In the Introduction, I wrote…

In the first Guided Autobiography workshop I taught, among my ten students were a 21-year-old who worked in an erotic toy store and was taking lessons to become a dominatrix and a 94-year-old fundamentalist preacher. The grace with which they accepted each other’s life choices astounded me. I was hooked on the magic of what we call “GAB.”

When Emma Fulenwider brought the idea of producing an anthology showcasing Guided Autobiography writing to our executive director, Cheryl Svensson, a new venue for communicating that magic of GAB was born.

To date, we have published four anthologies, available in paperback from Amazon, including the first two in Large Print editions. Second Chances is the fourth volume in the series.

Find the Birren Center Collection on Amazon here.

This year’s theme, Second Chances, invited writers to reflect on do-overs, fresh starts, and the grace that sometimes arrives unannounced. The stories were selected not for polish, but for heart. Their power lies in their vulnerability. So read these essays. Let them move you, comfort you, or challenge the way you see your own life story. And if you feel a spark—an urge to explore your own turning points—find a Guided Autobiography workshop near you. Check out the Instructor Locator on the Birren Center website here.

Every copy sold helps sustain and grow The Birren Center, which supports GAB instructors, students, and reminiscence writing programs around the world.