Write Your Story!: Memoir Workshop
Dates: 7 Wednesdays, March 25 - May 6
Time: 7 - 9:30 pm
Instructor: Christine O'Brien
Ages: Adult
Genre: Nonfiction
Price: $475
Often, when writing memoir, we don’t know where to start or we get to a place where we ask, “where do I go next?”
In this seven-week workshop, we will address this question with a three-tiered approach. We will workshop our 8-10 page (aprox. 2,000 – 2,500 word) submissions. We will engage in in-class generative writing exercises. And we will apply the tenets of story theory to our own work, examining the ways that truth telling, like fiction, benefits from the shaping we instinctively expect in story and discover the “Ah-ha” moments that we both write and read to experience.
Our goal is to explore the elements of craft that help us uncover the beating heart in our own stories. In particular we will discuss how to show emotion by deploying crisp description and meaningful dialogue.
Christine O’Brien's memoir, CRAVE, A Memoir of Food and Longing, was hailed as a “page turner” by Booklist and “a 20th Century fairytale” by The New York Times.
Christine has been a writing instructor at Saint Mary’s College in Moraga for ten years and has taught memoir workshops in the Bay Area and abroad. These venues include the Hedgebrook/
Bridging Woman’s Retreat in Moraga, The Book Passage in Corte Madera, Flashlight Books in Walnut Creek, and the Leopardi Writer’s Conference in Recanati, Italy.