The Writers Studio

You will find a memoir voice that’s all you, after closely reading excerpts from a variety of memoirs.

How do you write a good memoir? You apply the narrative techniques of fiction and poetry: you take the fascinating, messy raw material of your life and build a frame for it. You distill. You find a voice that’s all you but that also offers you flexibility, perspective and the right counterbalance to the story’s content. You tap into your emotions to give your story energy and urgency.

What’s the best way to start? In this six-week class, we will do close readings of an assortment of wildly varied but equally powerful memoirs – by memoirists ranging from Richard Wright to Carolyn Forché. Then you will try out these methods for yourselves to see which ones best serve the telling of your story.

Class Structure & Details

•Format: Weekly, unrecorded live classes via Google Meet

•What to Expect: During the hour-long, weekly Google Meet session, we will do close readings of excerpts of memoirs and discuss the techniques they use. After the class meeting, students put those techniques to use in an exercise and share their work in the online classroom. Each student receives structured, written feedback in the online classroom from three of their classmates and the teacher.

•Who Can Join:This six-week online workshop is open to new and emerging memoir writers as well as more experienced writers who are unfamiliar with The Writers Studio method.

📌 Note: Our Google Meet sessions are highly interactive and designed to be a safe space for sharing fresh work, so they are not recorded.