Class Description
In this advanced memoir class spanning five months, you will come with an idea for a book-length memoir and leave with a solid start of a draft and a plan for where to go next. This class is perfect for those interested in eventually participating in the Memoir Generator or Memoir Incubator program.
In the first six weeks of this class, we will focus on planning and outlining your memoir. Students will share some of their favorite memoirs by a variety of authors, and we will look at how those authors structured their stories. We’ll do exercises in class designed to help you figure out how to tell and structure your story, and each writer will develop an individual roadmap for their project. We’ll look at exemplary readings from writers (including Jesmyn Ward, Michelle Zauner, Mark Doty, Rachel Cusk, Hilary Mantel, Lucy Grealy, and Kiese Laymon), and discuss memoir craft aspects (including situation and story, research and interviewing, character development, and dialogue). We will also explore the ethics of telling personal narratives.
In the next fourteen weeks of class, we will transition towards building your draft, using the planning tools you developed in the first section. You will have several opportunities to workshop material from your memoir and receive in-depth feedback from both your classmates and the instructor. Throughout the workshopping portion of class, we will also have planning touchpoints to check in with your memoir's roadmap and make updates where appropriate as your stories unfold. We will also spend the second portion of class reading a selected memoir and discussing the craft techniques and story development from that week's reading each week.
Important dates: The application deadline for this class has now passed. All applicants can expect to hear back within 2 weeks of the application deadline. Applications submitted after the deadline will not be reviewed and will not receive a response. The payment deadline for admitted students is Monday, January 6th.
Writing Roadmap: We've created a simple, goal-based writing roadmap to help you find the perfect GrubStreet course for your writing needs.
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.