Class Description
You’ve got all the raw material you need to write a memoir: your memories, experiences and insights. But to shape them into a compelling and engaging work, you need to create actual scenes and arrange them in a narrative arc—while at the same time not straying too far from the truth. In this seminar, you’ll look at excerpts from published memoirs and personal essays to discover and discuss how authors manage to pull off this feat and find solutions to your own writing challenges. Specific topics will include planning your memoir, balancing exposition and scene, (re)creating dialogue, and when it’s OK to stretch the truth. You’ll have the chance to try out what you’ve learned with an exercise or two. Come with your work(s)-in-progress in mind or on paper.
Thanks to the excellent literary citizenship of our donors, scholarships are available for all GrubStreet classes. To apply, click the gray "APPLY FOR SCHOLARSHIP" button. In order to be considered for a scholarship, you must complete your application at least one week before the start date of a class. Please await our scholarship committee's decision before registering for the class. We cannot hold spots in classes, so the sooner you apply, the better. Scholarships cannot be applied retroactively.
For more detailed information about GrubStreet scholarships, including how to contribute to scholarship funds for other students, click here.
This class will take place using Zoom videoconferencing. After registering, a yellow Resources tab will appear in this section containing a link to join class. Please note that you will need to be logged into view the Resources tab.
Zoom Participation:
In our experience, the intimate nature of a writing workshop benefits from on-camera participation. Students are of course welcome to turn their camera off whenever they need to, but it is a community norm for cameras to be on most of the time. You can learn more about using Zoom here.
Zoom Accessibility:
You can enable closed captioning at any time during the meeting by clicking the CC button at the bottom of the screen. If you'd like to access the transcript after class, please make sure to let your instructor ahead of time that you'd like a copy.