| The Stuff of Memoir: Mining Personal Artifacts and Journals to Write Your Story - Online

Inspiration and guidance is revealed through the primary source materials of your life.

NOTE: This class will be held in a live, online format using the Zoom platform
Class meets 10am-5pm ET Weekend 1, individually scheduled one-hour meetings Weekend 2, and 10am-5pm Saturday of Weekend 3 (Full Schedule Below)

Translating lived experiences to the page is much more than simply transcribing memories. Writing first-person essays or a memoir asks an author to become a keen and careful observer. The primary source materials of a life– sketchbooks, recipes, a wooden spoon, favorite sweater, journals, saved ticket stubs, a coffee mug, other ephemera– all contribute clues and inspiration for crafting prose. These personal artifacts can act as a welcome catalyst for considering the story of oneself.

Each student will select an object or objects to use as writing prompts during this three-weekend workshop, as exercises will revolve around these chosen items. Substantial parts of the first weekend are reserved for writing, as nothing takes the place of sustained time and focus to transform thoughts to written words. Peer and instructor feedback is also a central component of the course, as work improves immeasurably with the help of the collective. Therefore, one-on-one feedback sessions scheduled individually the second weekend will augment the group feedback the first and third weekends. 

For our online format, we will gather the first weekend both mornings at 10:00am ET in our Zoom classroom, and there will be morning programming, followed by independent writing segments for two hours leading up to lunch hour at 12:30pm (both writing and lunch are offline). We’ll then return to our Zoom classroom for sharing and peer feedback at 1:00pm, followed by another shorter round of offline writing that builds off the feedback, and closing back in our Zoom classroom with a few examples of personal essays that build off personal objects. Both days will finish by 5:00pm.

The following weekend, all students will have the option to set up one-on-one feedback sessions with Anita, in order to provide continued motivation, momentum, and lift to your writing project. Finally, a final Saturday in the third weekend will be devoted to returning to the Zoom classroom to continue to share and refine work. This format of three weekends is intended to allow participants a more sustained engagement with their pieces, and to deepen the connection across the writing cohort.

Peppered throughout the workshop will be moderated discussions on the relationship between humans and everyday objects, from the Japanese concept of tsukumogami (household objects with souls), to the collection Worn Stories by Emily Spivack.

Students at all stages of the writing process are encouraged to enroll. The course can benefit everyone from those with publication ambitions, to those interested in committing stories down in writing for posterity, or those fascinated by our connection to inanimate objects, and all in between.