Reflections from Jay K. Musoff

Jay K. Musoff, son of Wallace Musoff, collaborated with his brothers, Scott D. and Adam L. Musoff, to publish A Gentleman Doing His Duty: Wallace Musoff and His Life in the Law with Modern Memoirs in 2020. This collection of the court records of legal cases tried by their father took three and a half months from the day we started it until books arrived on their doorsteps. Modern Memoirs President Megan St. Marie reflected on the project shortly after its completion in 2020 in a blog entitled “On the Important Things in Life.” We recently caught up with Jay Musoff to ask what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his father’s book with others.

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1. You created this book as a gift to your father to mark his 90th birthday. It spans his legal career with the U.S. Treasury Department in the 1950s and 1960s, and private practice from the 1970s to the 1990s. What inspired you to create a custom hardcover book of his court records, including family photos, news articles, and a collaborative introduction and epilogue by you and your brothers, as opposed to producing a standard volume of law reports?

Jay Musoff: Our father had a prominent and colorful legal career—involving some notable and notorious figures. Dad always had great stories about his cases, and we wanted to collect those cases, along with some memorable stories, in one place that could be shared with his family, particularly his grandchildren.

2. What was your father’s reaction when you presented him with the book?

Jay Musoff: Dad’s 90th birthday was in April 2020, and Mom had planned a big birthday celebration. COVID-19 ruined those plans. Instead, we had to celebrate Dad’s 90th birthday by Zoom. We had shipped the book to my parents’ house, and we had Dad open the box during the Zoom celebration. Dad was literally speechless. He said that the book was “breathtaking” and the best present he ever received.

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“Each year since my dad has been gone, I reread the book on his birthday.”

3. What feedback have you gotten from other family members?

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Jay Musoff: Dad inscribed copies of the book to all his children and grandchildren, plus some friends who are mentioned in the book. The grandchildren particularly loved some of the stories and the pictures we included in the book of their grandfather “back in the day.”

4. The cover of the book features a custom-designed image of the badge of a special agent with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Why did you choose that emblem to represent the whole?

Jay Musoff: Dad was enormously proud of his service to our country, and the special agent badge represented that pride.

5. Your father passed away in 2023, three years after you published his book. What did it mean to you to complete it in time for his milestone birthday in 2020? How have you reflected further on the project since his passing?

Jay Musoff: We could think of no better way to mark Dad’s 90th birthday than this book that both commemorated and celebrated our father. Dad loved the book and kept copies in his office, and on the coffee tables in the living room and den room of his home. Each year since my dad has been gone, I reread the book on his birthday.

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Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Stanley R. Clemens

Stanley R. Clemens published his book entitled An Unexpected Life: Professor, Author, Fundraiser, Entrepreneur with Modern Memoirs in 2010. This Commissioned Memoir took 3-1/2 years from the day he first contacted us to the day books arrived on his doorstep. We asked Clemens to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his book with others.

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1. Whom did you intend your readers to be, and what were your goals in creating the book for them?

Stanley Clemens: I wrote the book for the benefit of my children and grandchildren and any later descendants who might gain access. Although a relatively small audience, it allowed me to share family stories and personal reflections that I might have been hesitant to include if I had planned to share the publication more broadly.

2. Your project was a Commissioned Memoir, or “as-told-to” narrative, which means that we conducted a series of in-person interviews with you and then created the narrative from the transcripts, maintaining your voice. How did the project benefit from this approach, as opposed to you writing the text yourself?

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Here’s a story that suggests I was successful. About 10 years after completing my memoir, one of my sons said […], “I reread your memoir last night, and I’d like to hear more about…”

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Stanley Clemens: Prior to writing this memoir I had written numerous books professionally, but they were mathematics textbooks. I feared that my writing style might mask important emotions and decided that an “as-told-to” approach would encourage more open sharing with my family. I describe myself as an introvert, but I think these tendencies were not a problem in the end. Talking to Ali de Groot, the interviewer, was like talking to a close friend. Her genuine interest in hearing my story made the process easy and exciting.

Here’s a story that suggests I was successful. About 10 years after completing my memoir, one of my sons said, “When are you going to take me to visit your boyhood landmarks?” About 10 minutes into the 10-hour drive to see those boyhood sights, my son said, “I reread your memoir last night, and I’d like to hear more about that conflict you had with your high school basketball coach. The way you reacted was so out of character for you.”

3. How would you describe the interview process, what it was like to do your own editing after receiving the initial text, and then have our editors work closely with you to polish and complete it? How did this collaborative approach help to shape the final piece?

Stanley Clemens: I began the writing process by writing an outline for the book. I used this outline as I orally told my story to Ali. The interviews involved about 8 day-long sessions which were recorded. It was a very comfortable process. Ali was supportive and respectful throughout. She helped pull out details from me.

When I received the transcripts back, I took the lead over the next months and did the revising that I felt was needed. I reorganized, rearranged, changed wording, and inserted photographs. It was revision work, not editing work. It became my book. As we got close to the end of the process, Modern Memoirs did what I would call formal editing and helped shape a few of the more difficult spots. Throughout it was a very cooperative process.

4. You said that you “found it very difficult to reach back to childhood, to understand who I was then, and to claim that person as myself.” In the end, what helped you access that period of your life and include it in your story?

Stanley Clemens: I think there was a disconnect between who I became as an adult and who I was as a child. As I think about it now, I would point out that among my parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and other adults important in my life as a child, there was no one who was a role model for whom I became as an adult. Once I realized that to be the case, I found the disconnect easier to accept and I found the case for writing my memoir more compelling.

5. What advice would you share with others who are considering working with Modern Memoirs on a Commissioned Memoir?

Stanley Clemens: Go for it. I think you will enjoy the experience. The reason it took several years to complete my memoir was on me, not them. The staff was very professional and helpful.

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Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

The Last I Love You: How Memoir Writing Guides Us Through Grief

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A blog post by
Cecelia Allentuck, Publishing Intern

There are no guides to grief. No Grief for Dummies book, no owner’s manual to the bereaved heart. You have to just...feel grief…until it fades to a low simmer in your gut. That feeling can be overwhelming, with grief inside your heart and somehow outside of yourself, too, threatening to devour whatever lies before it. How do you stop it? I wish I had an answer that fit every mold, that could be placed in the hand of every grieving person consumed by their own feelings. But I don’t.

As an 11-year-old, I found my way through grief by walking alongside it, exploring all the caverns of my heart that a loved one left behind, and writing every step of the way. That year, I lost my Uncle John to cancer. I held tight to the hand of my mother, the strongest woman I know, as she lost her brother, who was also one of her best friends. A few months later, while my family and I were still reeling from the loss, my sixth-grade teacher assigned our class a short narrative piece that was supposed to teach us how to show “explosive moments in our writing.”

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I find myself turning to writing as soon as I feel grief creeping up on me.

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Uncle John’s death was explosive—a shock that left me with a growing feeling that I couldn’t shake away. That feeling was grief. I was so young, using a locker for the first time, switching classrooms every block, smiling at my friends in the hallway. Everything might have seemed normal, on-track, but grief was dancing along the folds of my brain, beating in the blood from my heart, and weighing my shoulders down to a sag.

I decided to write about it.

The writing was a short memoir-like piece, titled, “The Last I Love You.” In it I described the day I visited Uncle John to say my final goodbyes. I wrote about the anxiety of anticipation, waiting for an end I never wanted to arrive, and how strange it felt to both know something bad was about to happen and still be unprepared for it. I wrote about the love I had for his dogs, and my worries for their future without him. Uncle John was a person I’d known my whole life, and then he was gone, the stranger that was grief entering in his place. I wrote about the discomfort I felt at his loss, wearing grief like wet jeans, itchy and tight and heavy, as I navigated the unfamiliarity of the world without him. I wrote about how the last “I Love You” I spoke, even though faintly, even if it went unheard, had helped carry me through the months after his death. And as I wrote, my bottled-up grief came pouring out all at once.

I read my piece out loud in front of my class, something I am not sure I could do today, sharing my feelings with old friends, new friends, and students I wouldn’t interact with after that year. With shaky hands but a loud voice, that experience taught me that writing is a superpower, giving us courage and strength by putting words to feelings and making them less overwhelming.

When I wrote this assignment, I never expected that doing so would change how I work through my emotions. Although writing cannot fill the space left by the loss of a loved one, I discovered that it allows me to sift through the messy feelings, extract the good and bad, and create beauty from pain. Years later, I find myself turning to writing as soon as I feel grief creeping up on me. Not only does writing hold my hand through the bad moments, but it reminds me to look at grief from love’s perspective. There is no grief without love, after all. Love gives us something to grieve. Love creates space for grief to settle in. Love transforms grief into a friend who keeps those we’ve lost present in our hearts. Love makes the last “I love you” I shared with my Uncle John not a final goodbye, but a promise to remember him always.

The first part of the short memoir piece that the author wrote about her Uncle John when she was 11 years old, published in the AFAM Point of View newspaper, January 1, 2018

The author’s Uncle John with one of his three dogs, Mojo

Gianna Allentuck (the author’s mother) and Uncle John

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Cecelia Allentuck is publishing intern for Modern Memoirs, Inc,

Writing as Gardening

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I understand that there are people in the world who don’t like writing. People who would cringe at the sight of a blank piece of paper and pen, or a blank document on the screen. To me, it is the ultimate freedom—I can write whatever I want? Travel to all manner of places in my imagination and memory? Words flowing out onto the page faster than my pen can write or hands can type? Easy! Natural!

But if you give me a gardening project, even transferring a small basil seedling into a clay pot, I will run. Yes, I love fresh veggies and herbs. Flowers are pretty. But I don’t like the feel of dirt in my fingers or toes, and I don’t like the sweat and anger that I immediately exude when holding a scythe or clippers or rake or hoe.

I’m not without a tinge of guilt about this. For 30 years, I’ve lived in the Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, a fertile, lush valley on the banks of the Connecticut River, especially famous for asparagus, tobacco, and corn. When I moved into my house, which we bought from my husband’s parents and where they had lived for a few years, I inherited a half-acre backyard with a full vegetable garden, including asparagus and raspberries. I had high hopes of carrying on the family garden.

Up until then, I’d only lived in coastal Atlantic or Pacific cities. But we had two babies and another on the way, and living in the city just wasn’t affordable, even in 1994. If it weren’t for the fact that there are 5 universities within 10 miles of this town, which means a lot of cafes, 59 to be exact, I don’t think I would’ve moved to the so-called Happy Valley. It is beautiful, mind you! But you really need to like northeastern hills (not really mountains), dark woods, murky ponds, mucky swamps, old farms, old barns, bats and mosquitos, and at the very least, gardening. It’s really country.

“I had high hopes of carrying on the family garden.”

And so we moved into my in-laws’ former house with the big backyard garden. How could I not take advantage of a beautifully tilled area that would magically give way to fresh vegetables? It seemed easy enough.

I wisely waited til spring. Never having gardened in my life, and based on my past luck with indoor plants, I naturally assumed that nothing would grow. So instead of starting with a few plants, I bought 20 tomato seedlings, 15 basil, 10 each of lettuce, corn, peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, and 5 pumpkin plants. I also bought innumerable starter packs of herbs. We ground up the earth with the rototiller that had been left here and somehow got all of those plants into the ground in April? May? June? No idea.

A bit of context: By then, we had three children under the age of four. In my mind, I pictured nursing the baby in a chaise longue out in the grass in the sun while the toddlers ran around happily. I saw us gleefully plucking herbs and vegetables every night for our dinners.

This is not what occurred. First of all, despite my prediction, almost everything we planted grew like crazy. But I also discovered that gardening absolutely involves weeding, or all-out combat against nature. By the time I caught on, weeding was out of the question. It looked like a jungle back there. The toddlers hated the prickers, spiders, mosquitoes, gnats, everything that nature offers. I, reduced to a toddler state, completely agreed with the kids. So we just ignored the backyard for a month or two.

Everything continued to grow with abandon. While I was reading Sendak’s Where the Wild Things Are to my kids, it was happening out back. During this time, I was nursing, trying to get frozen fish sticks or pasta or omelettes on the table, and enforcing naps as well as the 1,001 rules of childrearing. Outside, beyond my long-faded control, there were hundreds of peppers, zucchini, and lettuce, and thousands of tomatoes and cucumbers, trapped by leafy herbs which I now couldn’t distinguish from weeds. The corn was the outlier that didn’t make it.

It was thus that the only thing my offspring learned about gardening was how to write the word “FREE”—free tomatoes, free zucchini, free peppers, etc.—as we placed the daily catch on a table in the front yard for passersby. If they’d been a little older, the kids could’ve sat at the table and perhaps sold the vegetables, becoming productive little businesswomen, but that was out of the question for toddlers who couldn’t dress or tie their shoes. I was sequestered inside, nursing the baby every three hours, and couldn’t let them out of my sight.

I give myself a lot of credit for the effort in that first year of living in the country—the result being that I have never gardened since.

Do not despair, O gardeners. I admit to having a teeny tiny plot (4’ x 4’) with perennials that friends have planted for me: iris, columbine, phlox, and omnipresent violets. This year, against all better judgment, I’m venturing into creating a pollinator garden with local plants, where the hedges of raspberries used to be. Though native, these plants have foreign names to me, like Hoary Vervain, Hairy Beardtongue, Ninebark, Boneset—good names for modern alternative bands. As of this writing, the wistful plants are still in their plastic starter trays, but I have high hopes…

Meanwhile, I suppose I can garden through writing. I plant a seed, a concept. I nurture the seedling—words, phrases, sentences. I weed through the undesired parts. Finally, I watch this creation grow before my eyes. If I don’t like what comes out, I’ll erase or delete it and try again, fresh, another day.

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My miniature garden, planted by friends and family, stones added by me to deter weeds

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Ali de Groot is director of publishing for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Andrew H. Stephens

Andrew H. Stephens, son of Eugene E. Stephens, recently completed the posthumous publication of his father’s collection of essays and poems entitled Blue Collar Rage with Modern Memoirs in 2024. This project took seven months from the day we started it until books arrived on Stephens’ doorstep. In honor of Father’s Day this month, we asked Stephens to reflect on what the publication process was like for him, and what it has meant to share his father’s writings with others.

In the opening pages of Blue Collar Rage, Andrew Stephens describes his father, Eugene Stephens, as a one-of-a-kind “Renaissance man” locked in an endless exploration of knowledge and the arts. Andrew writes, “I believe my father’s uniqueness came from the fact that not only was he an intellectual who loved to read, sculpt, paint, write poetry and pursue his philosophy, but at the same time he carried his lunch pail to work every day as a blue collar factory worker for thirty-five years.”

Over his lifetime, Eugene wrote his essays and reflections in 32 notebooks. Shortly before his death in 1993 at the age of 68, Eugene selected from those writings and drafted an introduction intended to be collected into a book and shared with his children and grandchildren. The book was never completed.

Andrew inherited the notebooks upon his father’s death and spent the next eight years transcribing and typing all of them into a single manuscript. From this, he produced a paperback book at a copy shop. He later commissioned Modern Memoirs to design and publish a hardcover version.

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1. What was it like to transcribe your father’s notebooks?

Andrew Stephens: My father never discussed with me what he was writing, nor did he ever state why he was writing in his journals. When I began typing from his four decades of journal entries, I was focused solely on making progress and being as efficient with my time as possible. However, it quickly became apparent that I had a unique opportunity to learn more about my father’s intimate thoughts about his life and his journey to understand his spirituality. I started to slow down and attempted to observe how his thoughts evolved over this multi-decade period. What a gift it was for me, as I later realized.

2. What do you think your father understood his role as father to be?

Andrew Stephens: Great question and a challenging one for me to answer. My father grew up in a family struggling to make financial ends meet. Born before the Great Depression, he talked about the struggles he endured in early life. He aspired to work at a good company that would allow his two sons to “go to college,” which was the American Dream for his generation. Traditional father interactions in our neighborhood, like fishing, hunting, or pitching a baseball in the front yard, never happened. Interactions with my father centered on conversations at the dinner table, often revolving around history, science, and religion. These conversations, more often than not, turned into constructive but sometimes heated debates.

“I think he began to prepare his book when he came to the conclusion that his writings would be his legacy that he could pass down to his two sons and his grandchildren. A gift that keeps on giving.”

3. What do you think his intentions were in attempting to share his writings with you?

Andrew Stephens: I believe my father’s initial intention and motivation when he journaled into his notebooks was strictly for himself. It was his way to formulate his thinking, debate with himself, and to revise his ongoing worldview. He starved for intellectual conversation. It was a common occurrence for my brother and myself, when we visited as adults, that our father would initiate dinner conversations that would last until bedtime, with our father, at times, standing in the doorway still making his last point. I think he began to prepare his book when he came to the conclusion that his writings would be his legacy that he could pass down to his two sons and his grandchildren. A gift that keeps on giving.

4. What inspired you to publish the second, hardcover volume with Modern Memoirs? What are the most significant differences between the two books?

Andrew Stephens: I knew his writings were something special that had great value to me. I realized I needed to invest in creating a professional and well-made edition that would stand the test of time. Ultimately, out of respect for my father, I wanted the quality of the outside hardcover binding to match the quality of the inside content.

5. Your father self-developed skills in leather tooling and book binding. How did the cover design and binding selections you made at Modern Memoirs pay homage to that?

Andrew Stephens: The font for the cover and layout design was put together by my father himself. It was very unusual, and I could not replicate it. Therefore, on the first softcover edition, I did something very different. I was quite impressed that Modern Memoirs proactively suggested we attempt to match what he designed nearly thirty years ago. They were successful, and I know my father is looking down from above with a smile on his face at what ultimately became of his memoir in this beautifully crafted book.

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Liz Sonnenberg is staff genealogist for Modern Memoirs, Inc.

Reflections from Ambassador Nabeela Al Mulla

Nabeela Al Mulla published eBook, softcover, and hardcover editions of her memoir entitled Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador with Modern Memoirs in 2025. This Assisted Memoir took eleven months from the day we started the project to the day her first books arrived on her doorstep. We asked Al Mulla to reflect on what the publication process was like for her, and what it has meant to share her book with others.

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Nabeela Al Mulla started her four-decade diplomatic career in the 1970s, when she began serving in the Kuwaiti Foreign Ministry. This work included time at the United Nations in the turbulent Gulf War era. Al Mulla went on to make history with a series of ground-breaking appointments:

• In 1993, she became Kuwait’s first woman ambassador with her posting in Zimbabwe. This was followed by other postings in Southern Africa during Nelson Mandela’s transformative presidency in post-apartheid South Africa.

• From 2002–2003, she served as the first woman from the Middle East and South Asia region to chair the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency. This was during the launch of the US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

• In 2004, as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary and Permanent Representative of the State of Kuwait, she became the first Arab woman ambassador to the UN.

Al Mulla’s impassioned dedication to global cooperation continued as she went on to lend her expertise to NATO, the IAEA, and the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, among other organizations.

1. If you could travel back in time to give advice to your younger self, what concept or practice would you tell her is essential to becoming effective and successful in diplomatic service?

Nabeela Al Mulla: I would tell my younger self: never stop learning, and never stop challenging yourself. The world of diplomacy is constantly evolving—what you think you know today may be reshaped by tomorrow’s events. I would also remind myself that the path you imagine at the start of your career is not always the one you will follow. And that’s okay. Sometimes the unexpected opportunities, the unplanned detours, end up being the most rewarding. True success, in diplomacy and indeed in life, comes from adaptability, openness to change, and the courage to keep growing—no matter where life takes you.

2. You have been dedicated to arms control and disarmament since your student days. Of what achievement in your career are you most proud for its contribution to peace and security in the Middle East?

Nabeela Al Mulla: I am most proud of the work we did at the International Atomic Energy Agency, particularly during my time chairing the Board of Governors. That period—amid growing global tensions over nuclear proliferation—demanded delicate balance: advocating for Middle Eastern security concerns, supporting international frameworks, and ensuring Kuwait’s voice was part of the global disarmament dialogue. Knowing that I could contribute to strengthening the non-proliferation regime, even modestly, is a point of gratification.

“I hope readers, especially young people, take away the understanding that history is shaped by those who persevere despite doubts and setbacks.”

3. You became an ambassador in 1993, yet women in Kuwait did not win the right to vote until 2005. How did you reconcile this disparity in empowerment?

Nabeela Al Mulla: I was proud to break barriers and represent my country at the highest diplomatic levels, but I always understood that Kuwait, like any young nation, was still finding its footing. More importantly, what matters is that women participate meaningfully in national decision-making—bringing their voices, expertise, and perspectives to the table. It was never just about formal milestones; it was about ensuring that women contribute to shaping the country’s future. Progress takes time, but I believed deeply that my own work could help demonstrate that Kuwaiti women were already making valuable contributions to our nation’s success on the world stage.

4. Why was it important to you to record your life journey? What insights do you hope readers will gain by reading your memoir?

Nabeela Al Mulla: Writing this memoir was, above all, an act of reflection—and a token to the next generation. I wanted to offer an honest account of the triumphs, but also the challenges and lessons learned along the way. I hope readers, especially young people, take away the understanding that history is shaped by those who persevere despite doubts and setbacks. I also wanted to document Kuwait’s diplomatic story, as seen through my personal lens, so it is not lost to time.

5. What surprised you most about the process of writing your memoir? What did you learn about yourself along the way?

Nabeela Al Mulla: What surprised me most was how reflective the process became. I had initially approached it as a way to document key events and milestones, but I soon realized it was also an opportunity to take stock of the broader journey—to look back thoughtfully on the choices, challenges, and shifts over time. Writing the memoir reminded me that even a long career is made up of many small moments, and that leadership often means navigating change with consistency and a sense of purpose. It reaffirmed for me the importance of perspective and measured judgment, both in public life and in private reflection.

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TO PURCHASE Breaking New Ground on the Global Stage: Memoirs of Kuwait’s First Woman Ambassador by Nabeela Al Mulla:

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