Instructor: Iversen | Online | Asynchronous
Memoir gives writers the chance to shape lived experience into narrative, drawing on techniques from fiction, the essay, and poetry. This creative-writing course pairs close reading and analysis of several memoirs with students’ own work in autobiographical narrative. Students will explore the memoirist’s contract with the reader—how a memoir may be selective, creative, and even speculative, but must remain grounded in fact and committed to truth. They will also learn practical research methods, including interviewing and working with letters, photographs, digital resources, and other relevant texts. Throughout the term, we’ll emphasize how inventive writing grows out of attentive reading, and how writers can adapt craft elements from fiction, essays, and poetry to produce a short memoir that tells a distinctive story. Readings include Sarah M. Broom’s The Yellow House, Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, and Javier Zamora’s Solito.