When we write memoir, personal essay, or autofiction, we have to make choices about how to represent our various selves at different moments in time. In order to bring the past alive, it becomes necessary to think of the shifting self as a character. Our task becomes to find ways to represent this self on the page—just as a novelist must do when writing fiction. This attempt plays a role in the choices we make around setting, dramatic movement and tension, voice, narrative distance, and more. In this weekend workshop, you’ll learn from a variety of ways authors have written themselves as characters. We’ll read excerpts from the work of Marguerite Duras, Vivian Gornick, Jamaica Kincaid, and others as we try our hand at a range of strategies. By the end of our weekend, you’ll have lots of material, and you’ll have discovered new ways to represent the self on the page. We will end the weekend with time for everyone to share new work with the group and leave with plenty of ideas for moving forward. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our weekend.

Where to begin? That’s the question memoirists are faced with at the beginning of a project. Whether your story spans years, months, or days, the opening pages of the book must capture the reader. In this workshop, we’ll look at a range of “beginnings”—considering the various styles, strategies, and approaches writers use to bring the reader into the world of their book. The week will involve a range of reading and writing exercises, as well as time dedicated to workshopping. Overall, you can expect to be writing a lot and reading a lot. The class will be useful for those just starting out, those with a project in mind, and those already in process. In this workshop, we will generate new writing through guided exercises and prompts; offer feedback/first impressions on writing you produce in our week.