Instructor: Margaret McMullan

Ready to write the story of your life? Or maybe just a portion of your life the way only you remember it?

In this memoir writing workshop, we’ll talk about what separates memoir from general nonfiction, and then we will write. I’ll provide writing prompts, guidelines, and other materials that will help us “excavate” our life for those memoir gems.

In his poem, “The Prelude,” William Wordsworth wrote about how there are spots of time in his life that serve to link the whole. These moments may seem like nothing at the time they are occurring, but they might mean more. Joan Didion called them shimmers. Emerson called them gleams. Whatever you call these golden nuggets, these are the moments writers hunt down and use.

Much of what we start will likely be the seeds to bigger projects. The idea here is to leave the workshop with a stockpile of material.