A finished hardback memoir
About us

A small team.
A great deal of care.

We are writers, editors and quiet listeners. We make books, films and websites about people's lives — and we treat every life as if it were our own grandparent's.

Our promise

You will be heard.
By one person.

From your very first message to the day your finished memoir is in your hands, you'll work with one writer — the right writer for your story. We never pass clients between desks; we never hand the most intimate parts of your life to a stranger; we never let a deadline run over a difficult conversation.

When you book a memoir we'll read your questionnaire, sit with the choices, and pair you personally with the team member best suited to your subject — by era, by temperament, by the kind of book you want. You'll know their name, their face and how to reach them within forty-eight hours.

We are a small team on purpose. Memoirs are a slow, sensitive craft. We'd rather take fewer clients each year and write each one beautifully.

Caring above all

We move at your pace, not ours. If a memory needs an extra cup of tea before it comes out, we wait.

One author per client

One writer reads every word you send us, returns every email, and signs the final book personally.

Literary, never industrial

Each memoir is hand-written, hand-edited, hand-designed. We do not use AI to generate the prose of your book.

The people behind your story

Meet the team.

One of these four will be paired with you for your memoir. We choose carefully, based on the era, the subject and the voice your story asks for.

Daniel Brooks
Daniel Brooks
Founder & Lead Memoir Writer

Daniel founded My Story after writing the privately published memoir of his own grandfather and watching three generations of family weep over it. Twenty years as a feature writer taught him how to listen for the sentence inside the silence. He works mostly with clients in their seventies and eighties.

Eleanor Brooks
Eleanor Brooks
Co-Founder & Creative Director

Eleanor co-founded My Story with her husband Daniel and runs the visual life of every memoir we make — typography, illustration, the gentle restoration of family photographs, and the design of each printed page. A background in fine-art book design and a soft, attentive ear on the phone make her the first warm voice many of our clients hear.

James Aldritch
James Aldritch
Senior Memoir Writer · Historical & Literary

James reads slowly, asks better second questions, and has a particular gift for memoirs that span wars, migrations and great change. Trained at Edinburgh, he writes with the cadence of an English novel and the discipline of a historian.

Mei Tanaka
Mei Tanaka
Story Curator & Editor

Mei takes the long, fragmented memories families send us and finds the warm shape of a book inside them. She's our gentle editor — the one who tells you which moment to keep, and which to let the silence do. Specialist in family histories told through small, daily things.

"From the first phone call to the day the book arrived, it was the same kind voice on the other end. It never felt like a project. It felt like a story being listened to."
— A. Pemberton, Norfolk · Hardback memoir for her father, 212pp
Ready when you are

Let's pair you with the right writer.

Begin the questionnaire, share what you can, and we'll personally introduce you to your dedicated author within 48 hours.

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