In this volume, Elayne Zalis maps out a journey of discovery and invention that spans the second half of the twentieth century and the early twenty-first. Amid transformational cultural, societal, political, and technological shifts, her personal story begins in South Florida in the early 1950s and concludes in Southern California, where she settles in the mid-1990s after extended stopovers in the Northeast, elsewhere in the South, and in the Midwest.

This expansive view across space and time allows Zalis to establish links between the television, popular culture, and diary writing that spark her imagination when she is a young girl and the creative pathways that independent video, personal computers, the internet, and social media later make possible. Writing becomes not only a through line but also a lifeline.

While adding her stories to our collective memory banks, Zalis passes on what she has learned. She also instigates a dialogue with her younger selves, who come alive once more in her mind and on the page. Together, they pay tribute to a life lived beyond the spotlight and behind the scenes. Imagination picks up where memory leaves off.

Curated Memories: A Boomer’s Personal Retrospective serves as a companion to Reimagining The Twilight Zone: A Young Fan’s Stories, a collection of autobiographical essays Zalis published in 2021.