Loading Events

« All Events

  • This event has passed.
Writers Workshops

MEMOIR 2017-307

Course #2017-307
Wednesdays Starting September 6 6:00 pm–9:00 pm running 8 weeks
Cost: $325 Instructor: Elizabeth Lyons
This workshop is full

Where

Writers In The Schools-workshop space
1519 West Main
Houston, TX 77006 United States
+ Google Map

“Don’t forget—no one else sees the world the way you do, so no one else can tell the stories that you have to tell.” –Charles de Lint


We all have stories to tell. This workshop will focus on helping you find the “shape” of your stories through reading, in-class exercises, and writers’ workshopping. We will learn new approaches to writing memoir and try our hand at using these new techniques in our own work.


The contemporary memoir is a genre filled with diverse voices and dynamic approaches to storytelling. We will read essays and excerpts from contemporary writers: Mary Karr, Jesmyn Ward, Darin Strauss, Joan Didion, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Carrie Brownstein, Roxane Gay, Deb Olin Unferth, and others.


Each class will be a mixture of discussing a contemporary memoirist or craft element, in-class writing exercises, and receiving structured feedback on our work from class participants. For writers new to memoir, you will end the class with a stronger knowledge of contemporary memoir, an expanded craft vocabulary, and new ways to approach writing memoir. Advanced writers will end the class with a deeper aesthetic sensibility, new approaches to drafting and revision, and a stronger sense of the trends in contemporary memoir.

About the instructor

ELIZABETH LYONS is the author of The Blessing of Dark Water (Alice James Books, 2017) Her poems have appeared in Tin House, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. She holds a BA from the College of Charleston, an MFA from Purdue University, and a PhD from the UH Creative Writing Program, where she was a nonfiction editor for Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. She was an Inprint C. Glenn Cambor Fellow, and has received fellowships and prizes from the Academy of American Poets, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the I-Park Foundation, and others.

By registering for an Inprint Writers Workshop you are agreeing to Inprint’s registration policies. Remember to sign up for the waiting list if the workshop you would like to take is full. To see the full Fall 2017 workshop schedule click here.