Mondoli Writing · Philadelphia
You're holding a book that began as a conversation.
Thank you for reading. If somewhere in these pages you thought about your own father, your mother, your grandparents — that is exactly why this company exists.
I'm Andrés Oliveros. I've been writing for more than twenty years. For the last few, I've been doing something more specific: sitting down with someone's parents, recording the conversation, and turning a life into a printed book for the family that will outlive it.
What we make
Not a published book. Not something for sale. One person's life — the way they tell it, with their phrases, their humor, the stories the family half-remembers — written, designed, bound, and printed in forty copies for the people who matter.
Most of our clients are in their forties and fifties. They commission it for a parent who is still here, or for one who isn't. Both work. When someone has passed, we build the book from the people who knew them.
How it works
- We talk first. A call to map out whose voices belong in the book — family, friends, business partners, the people from different chapters of a life.
- Interviews. Ten to eighteen recorded sessions, an hour each, by video or phone. Conversations, not questionnaires.
- Structure and writing. You approve the outline before a word is written. Then the manuscript comes back to the family for review, and we keep working until it sounds like them.
- Photography, design, print. Optionally, our photographer travels to where the life happened. Then the book is designed, printed, and delivered to your door.
If you've been meaning to ask your parents
Most people wait. Then the questions stay unasked. A thirty-minute call costs you nothing and tells you whether this is the right year to start — write to me and mention the book you're holding.
Mondoli Writing — memoirs and family histories, in English and Spanish.
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