Our memories are fallible and how others see us is inaccessible, but there is no denying that writing about self can produce a unique experience for the reader.

When writing from personal experience, you’ll have to decide what form works best and what disclosure you are willing to make about yourself, and others. Your task is that much harder than straightforward fiction. You must untangle what is a good story from ‘but that’s how it happened to me’.

Over the course of three assignments Jarred will share a selection of readings, a few questions to get you thinking and discussing as well as some writing prompts and a 900 word assignment that you will receive feedback on.

We’ll have exercises to see how memory is raw material for writing. We’ll explore how form inevitably affects the writing. We’ll raise questions about truth but inevitably the solution will be left as an exercise to the reader.

Readings will come from contemporary or near-contemporary writers writing about self from around the world such as Maxine Hong Kingston’s The Woman Warrior, Wu Ming-yi’s The Stolen Bicycle, Colin Grant’s Bageye at the Wheel and Harry Crew’s A Childhood.

This course is for any writer at any level who has a life story to tell and wants to figure out the best way to tell it.

Dates: Thursday 16 September – Wednesday 27 October 2021
Location: Online via Slack
Cost: £79-£99 (5 bursary places available)

Further details and to book here