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In case you haven’t noticed, memoirs are hot right now. From self-help gurus to genealogy sites to love stories—it’s all about the memoir.

Today, I am very excited to introduce you Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett, co-creators of a wonderful website called Women’s Memoirs.

Ladies, welcome to The Muffin! When I first found your website I was so excited. The site is beautiful, easy to navigate and absolutely full of information, products and offers. What is the story behind the creation of Women’s Memoirs?

Kendra Bonnett: Robyn. Thanks for the invitation to join you today. I’m going to turn over your first question to Matilda since she started us on the path to working in the memoir genre.

Matilda Butler: Hi Robyn. I’m pleased to be talking with you. Women’s Memoirs is the outgrowth of my experience interviewing more than 100 women for what became our award-winning collective memoir called Rosie’s Daughters: The “First Woman To” Generation Tells Its Story that Kendra and I co-authored. The interviews with the women became a life-altering experience for me. We laughed together; we cried together. These women’s stories touched my life. I became so involved in their narratives that I dreamed about these women almost nightly. Some told me parts of their lives they had never shared with anyone. At the end of these long and intense interviews, so many of the women said a variation of, “Thank you, I never took the time to look at my life before. Now I can see what I was doing and I can change as I move forward.”

For the first time, I realized how important it is to tell our stories.

I’m trained as a researcher and like to say that I started work on the collective memoir as a social scientist and ended as a memoir coach. Although I had been involved in women’s issues for much of my career, helping women tell their life stories once again reshaped my professional focus.

I knew that if I wanted to reach women with information about how to write a memoir, I needed a website. The current site, which is actually its third incarnation, is a blog. That has helped us be able to cover many topics on a regular basis -- much easier than in an earlier version where we had to make changes and additions in html code.

I get the feeling that Women’s Memoirs has a mission; would you like to share a little about that?

Kendra: I’m glad that our passion comes through in our website and in the information we provide. Our mission is simple, yet decidedly grand. We want to help every woman tell her story. Women’s life stories have been, and in many cases continue to be, shortchanged and undervalued. We offer women the tools and support that it takes to write their memoirs. Some women, of course, want to write for themselves or for their families. A life story should be captured, considered and shared, even if the message goes no farther than a daughter or grandchild.

For that matter, the very act of capturing the story is beneficial as it often helps the writer resolve issues and heal. It’s important