Introduction to Memoir

The personal essay is the single best way to understand one of the basic rules of memoir: tell one story at a time. In this course, you will first create a blueprint of the larger story you’d like to tell, and focus on writing several short essays. You’ll learn to separate fact from truth, develop a solid “understory,” and weave insights into the narrative that you would not have been able to articulate at the time the event(s) took place. Each non-fiction essay will serve as an individual chapter in what could become a larger body of work. Students will be encouraged to participate in a public reading on the evening of August 26.