Michelle Seaton
Instructor Statement
"Many people begin with an idea for a memoir, based on an extraordinary experience or set of experiences, or the survival of a terrible loss, or the details of a personal quest. These are all great starting points for a story, but a memoir is more than just a description of what happened. In this class, we’re going to study published memoirs as we write our own, in part to learn how to borrow great techniques from other writers. We’re also going to distance ourselves from what took place in the past and start thinking about why the story has to be told. We’re going to build a supportive environment that lets you generate a lot of pages, and we’re going to give you some distance from your younger self so you can look at your story as a story."
About the Instructor
Michelle Seaton’s short fiction has appeared in One Story, Harvard Review and Sycamore Review, among others. She is a recipient of the Pushcart Prize for her short story “The Prospects.” Her essays have appeared in The Pinch and Lake Effect. Her essay “How to Work a Locker Room” appeared in the 2009 edition of Best American Nonrequired Reading. She won a Murrow Award as a correspondent for National Public Radio’s “Only a Game.” She is the coauthor of the books The Way of Boys (William Morrow, 2009) and the Cardiac Recovery Handbook (Hatherleigh Press, 2004). She has been an instructor at GrubStreet since 2000 and is the lead instructor and created the curriculum for GrubStreet’s Memoir Project, a program that offers free memoir classes to senior citizens in Boston neighborhoods. The project has visited every Boston neighborhood and produced five anthologies. Twenty-two Nantucket residents also participated in a Memoir Project class that produced the anthology Little Grey Island.