This workshop will focus on the element of time in your memoirs. In his The Art of Time in Memoir, Sven Birkerts says, “the manipulation of the double vantage point in the memoirist’s single most powerful and adaptable technique.” We will investigate how we might incorporate that technique into your memoirs and the many ways language might suggest both the “then” and “now.” One emphasis will be on how the elements of point of view, flashback, and reflection might serve as scaffolding in our work. In addition, we will look for “artifacts that suggest narrative,” as Ian Frazier suggests, and if needed, we will discuss the kinds of research that help us access stories from the past and provide historical context. Our goal is to tell good stories, building those stories from the fragments we remember and discover. We will take a few moments to look at short nonfiction examples that illustrate how to mark time, to make reflective sense of past events, and to fashion a text that coordinates all the pieces. But the majority of the workshop will be given to reading and discussing your work by an informed and sympathetic audience. In addition, there will be individual conferences.

In this workshop, we will share writing you bring from home. Please bring two short pieces of your work in progress (five to ten pages each), a variety of questions, and a curiosity about how all this is done.

In this workshop, we will workshop writing you bring from home.