This six-week course will revolve around set teaching assignments, writing exercises and peer review feedback, as well as feedback from your tutor. Its emphasis will be on the many different ways we can record our own experience through storytelling, but also how we might bridge the gap between the personal and the public.
‘The poet needs to get beyond ego in order to become the voice of more than autobiography.’ Seamus Heaney.
Memoir is defined as an historical account or biography written from personal knowledge. We are currently in trying times and there is a growing need not only to express ourselves through writing, but also to record our experience in ways that will help others to relate and understand.
Whether you’re interested in recording experience to pass on to future generations, or if your ambition is to reach a wider audience with publishable work, this course will be useful to you. It will also be a necessary online community of writers on a platform that enables much discussion and connectivity.
We will be looking closely at how we use memory in our writing, and how we can write it well. We’ll consider the importance of character and persona in writing about self, and structure, both in essay writing and book-length projects. These key three subjects will be woven together with other important elements of memoir and creative nonfiction that include scene-setting, sensual vivid writing, storytelling, critical distance and ethics.
This course is open to beginners and experienced writers.
Time Commitment: You should allow 3-4 hours per week for this course, for reading, writing and giving feedback to others.
Dates: 7th September – 18th October 2021
Location: Online
Cost: £195
Further details and to book
here