This is an in-person workshop that takes place at Inprint House.
If this workshop is full when you try to register, please sign up on the waiting list here so you receive priority registration the next time this class is offered.
Memoir
Life is fragmented, a collection of smashed vignettes held in memory. A cassette tape radio mix, a burned CD in your Sony Discman. Life resists linear narratives; our writing can too.
In this workshop, participants will explore lyric memoir and hybrid creative nonfiction through reading and discussing authors such as Michael V. Smith, Chelene Knight, and Alicia Elliott.
Through generative writing exercises, participants will contemplate life-memory, family stories, and broader social issues, building meaning through written forms that go beyond biography, memoir, and journalistic travelogues.
Some stories are impossible to tell in a straight line; this class offers tools for shaping them into work that speaks through image, rhythm, and fragments.
Cristalle Smith is an award-winning poet and writer. Her work is published in CV2, Arc Poetry, Room Magazine, The Maynard, and elsewhere. Cristalle is the winner of subTerrain Magazine’s literary award in creative nonfiction. Her book, Invisible Lives (Brave & Brilliant Series University of Calgary Press), won the Alberta Literary Awards for the Stephan G. Stephansson Prize for Book of Poetry 2025 and was longlisted for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award from the League of Canadian Poets. She has an MFA from University of British Columbia Okanagan and a PhD from the University of Calgary.
