Sonnet55
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Est. 2026 · An AI biographer

Everyone is a book. Almost no one gets written.

Sonnet55 spends a few weeks getting to know your storyteller — their years, their people, their places — and only then begins asking. Fifty prompts, one a week, written for them and no one else.

Give a memoirStart my own

Basic $60 · Plus $85 · one bound book included

A grandmother, her daughter and granddaughter looking through an old photo album at a kitchen table
Three generations, one afternoon, one album.
An older man laughing while telling a story to his grandson on a porch
Vintage family snapshots and a handwritten letter spread across a linen tablecloth

Not a questionnaire

A biographer asks the second question.

Most services mail out the same fifty questions to everyone. “What was your first job?” A real biographer listens first, notices the thing said in passing, and comes back to it three weeks later.

Sonnet55 does that. It learns the names, the towns, the years, and the silences — then builds a sequence of prompts that adds up to an actual life story rather than a pile of trivia.

You’ve mentioned Trieste twice now, always in passing. What happened there?
Prompt no. 20 — generated from three earlier stories

How it works

A year, in four movements.

  1. I

    Getting to know you

    Twenty easy questions by email or in the app. Ages, roles, places, people, what matters.

  2. II

    Fifty story prompts

    One arrives each week, written specifically for them and revised as the book grows.

  3. III

    Family joins in

    Friends and relatives suggest topics, comment, add photos, and write their own accounts.

  4. IV

    The printed book

    Stories are organized into chapters, laid out, previewed, and printed for the shelf.

What do you want to hear?

  • The summer you drove to Nova Scotia in the green station wagon.

    Katherine, daughter

  • What was your mother like as a young woman?

    Sam, nephew

  • The Christmas the power went out for four days — please, all of it.

    Ruth, sister

The people who know them

The whole family holds the pen.

Children, siblings, old friends — invite them all. They suggest what’s worth asking, leave notes in the margins of finished stories, add photographs from their own albums, and write short accounts of their own that can be bound into the back of the book.

The finished thing

Cloth, thread, and a name on the spine.

Every memoir is typeset in Newsreader, printed on cream stock, and bound. Basic arrives in black and white; Plus is printed in full color with photographs throughout.

Compare Basic and Plus
A cloth-bound printed memoir resting on a table beside reading glasses and a cup of tea

A Sonnet55 Memoir

The Bakery on
Ellis Street

Mary Thompson

1941 —

My father answered fifty questions in a year. He died in March. I have his voice in a book on my shelf, and my daughter will read it.

Annika L. — Portland, Oregon

Completed Feb 2026

Questions

Before you begin.

Does the storyteller need to be comfortable with computers?
No. Everything can be done by replying to an email. The app is there for anyone who prefers it.
What if they miss a week?
Nothing breaks. Prompts wait in the queue, and a gentle reminder goes out after a few days.
Can I see the prompts before they're sent?
Yes. As the facilitator you see the whole upcoming queue, and you're emailed the day before each prompt goes out.
Who owns the writing?
The storyteller does, entirely. Export the full text as an e-book at any time.
How long does it take?
About a year, at one story a week. You can go faster; nothing expires.