It’s Memoir Week over at Slate, which delves into a rash of new autobiographies and some older ones, too. Various memorists also talk about the experience of writing a book about their lives, among them Sean Wilsey in an essay called “Publish then Flee.”

Wilsey, author of Oh the Glory of It All, recounts the fallout from his 2005 San Francisco society tell-all.

He says his stepmother threatened to sue.

And that his mother, Pat Montandon, felt betrayed and hurt.

Now, next month in fact, she’s publishing a memoir of her own, called, at the insistence of her publisher, Oh the Hell of It All.”

While we’re on the subject … Frances at Ghost Word writes about a “moving” new memoir, The Water Will Hold You: A Skeptic Learns to Pray by Lindsey Crittenden.

Crittenden writes about how learning to pray helped her through the death of her brother and parents. It’s a Bay Area book through and through — Crittenden was raised here, she was living in Berkeley when she stumbled into All Soul’s Church and gave prayer a try, and she now lives in San Francisco.

I went to Crittenden’s book release party at the Mechanic’s Institute and heard her read a poignant description of looking at her brother in the hospital as he hovered in the netherworld between life and death. The passage was beautifully rendered.