The instructor—an award-winning author who offers decades of teaching, writing, editing, and publishing experience—will provide encouragement and guidance as you write your own story. Open your mind to new perspectives on writing memoir.
| Schedule | This class meets Wednesdays from 6:30 p.m.–8:00 p.m. |
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Learn how to write a memoir.
These are just a few of the prompts used in this beginning memoir writing class. We’ll engage in a variety of in-class exercises to help you rediscover life moments you want to capture. No formal writing experience is necessary, just a desire to explore your story and what compels you to tell it. Using key approaches to writing anything—Observation, Memory, Imagination, Research—participants will accomplish the following:
- Identify memories you want to capture on the page.
- Examine ways to tell stories.
- Practice writing through guided assignments.
- Produce a draft of your own memoir.
Participants will also read short examples of memoir and discuss them as a way to develop their own craft.
Who should attend
Anyone wishing to to create a memoir. No formal writing experience is necessary, just a desire to write.
Instructors
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Patti See’s work has appeared in Salon Magazine, Women’s Studies Quarterly, The Wisconsin Academy Review, The Southwest Review, HipMama, Inside HigherEd, as well as many other magazines and anthologies. She is the co-editor (with Bruce Taylor) of Higher Learning: Reading and Writing About College, 3rd edition and a poetry collection, Love’s Bluff. Her award-winning blog “Our Long Goodbye: One Family’s Experiences with Alzheimer’s” has been read in over 100 countries. She writes a monthly column for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram, Sawdust Stories for which she was awarded first place in the 2019 Wisconsin Newspaper Association's Annual Better Newspaper Contest, weekly division (for a piece on why she reveres her septic guy). She was a frequent contributor to Wisconsin Life on Wisconsin Public Radio. Her essay collection, “Here on Lake Hallie: In Praise of Barflies, Fix-It Guys, and Other Folks from Our Hometown,” is forthcoming from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in spring of 2022.
This Chippewa Falls native lives in Lake Hallie with her husband, the writer Bruce Taylor.