Non-Fiction Workshop: The Memoir II

ENGL

B3610

Non-Fiction Workshop: The Memoir II

This is the second semester of a year-long class that started in the fall, for students deep in the process of writing a book-length memoir or memoir-in-essays, with a clear concept. There are select seats for new students interested in beginning to write or conceive a memoir. The cohort of students in this class are dedicated to revising, expanding, workshopping, and editing book-length manuscripts over the course of an entire academic year. Memoir is about you and your story and yet your reader is coming to the page not for you, but because they expect to learn or understand something about themselves or about the world through your story. This class will help you see your own role in a bigger and more universal human story?no matter what your story might be. Writing about your own life can feel overwhelming. There?s simply too much material?how do you know what to leave out? And yet at the same time our stories can feel too small, too ordinary. How do we elevate our writing beyond the personal? In this workshop we?ll focus on shaping the material of lived experience into story. We?ll explore the building blocks of narrative prose: scene, structure, reflection, voice and setting. We?ll workshop your entire manuscript. And we?ll discuss problems and opportunities unique to personal writing: fostering vulnerability; tackling difficult subject matter; incorporating research; avoiding narcissism and solipsism; writing about real people. Our primary texts will be your work. We?ll read each other closely and ask useful, generative questions. We?ll also look at some brief excerpts from great essays and memoirs. And we?ll make time for in-class exercises to help you explore new approaches. My goal is for each student to continue the work of writing, buoyed by a supportive community.

Graduate

Yes