Please note that this is an online workshop conducted via Zoom. Participants will be provided information on how to join the online sessions.
“We do not remember days, we remember moments. The richness of life lies in memories we have forgotten” ― Cesare Pavese
What are the memories and moments that linger and resonate with you? How have those moments and memories shaped who you are and who you want to be? How do they show up in your writing? In this course we will focus on what Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola call “the body of memory.” How the five senses and that elusive sixth sense – our intuition – influence and shape the narratives of our lives. We will discuss and explore factual truth vs. emotional truth and how to write about those moments.that may not be entirely as clear to us.
We will look at work by Rigoberto Gonzalez, Jeannette Walls, Maya Angelou, Jon Pineda, Lucy Grealy, and others. This will allow us to explore memoir structure and organization. We will use excerpts from these texts to generate and revise work around one theme/time period of your choice. The hope of this process is that you will leave the course with the seeds to what could become a book length memoir.