Department of English

Memoir is more than well-told anecdotes; it’s carefully crafted prose that transforms personal experience into art. Like all great art, great memoirs may challenge or comfort, affirm or elucidate, but they always connect audiences to the fundamental prospect of what it means to be human. In this workshop intensive, you’ll combine your lived experience and point of view with literary techniques and tools to create work that connects to the world outside yourself. You’ll try out different structures, such as personal essay, lyric, hermit crab, epistolary and satire, all while keeping your anchors in nonfiction. We’ll look to masters of the craft for inspiration and insight, including readings/videos from Naomi Shihab Nye, Jonathan Lethem, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Joan Didion, Marlon James, Barry Lopez, Zadie Smith, Eula Biss, Jenifer Sang Eun Park, Phillip Lopate, and others. Through assigned readings, exercises, writing (so much writing!), workshopping, and revision (so much revision!), expect to become a stronger writer (technically and artistically), a more discerning reader, and a skilled editor.