Many of us want to write memoirs, but families-troubled or not-are loaded territory. Memories conflict with family lore; trauma in the past can trigger trouble in the present; and only the dead don't mind when you spill their secrets. How do we navigate wisely, mining recollections without either slipping into solipsism or pandering to an imagined audience? In this class we'll look at writers who have done it, such as James Baldwin, Annie Dillard, Vivian Gornick, Richard Rodriguez, and Sister Souljah, to trace their fault lines and unearth their strategies for remaining faithful to their readers while truthful to their lived experience. This is a writing-intensive course, and students will write and workshop several family scenes. With the student work in hand, we'll be able to explore issues of voice and point of view, and ways to gain enough emotional distance from characters to make them both believable and three-dimensional. We'll build these scenes into a few full-length stories or, if a student wishes, chapters for a larger work.Materials Fee: $20.00

---