Literary Cleveland · Shaping Stories: Intermediate Memoir Writing

Shaping Stories: Intermediate Memoir Writing

One of the most difficult parts of memoir writing is shaping a real experience into a compelling story. As writers, we have an array of useful tools at our fingertips. We have dialogue. We have description. We can develop vivid characters, and we can experiment with form and structure. But how do we use those elements to tell a story that grips our readers? Not only will this course help you refine the "building blocks" of memoir writing, it will also teach you to transform a "true" experience into a page-turner.

Instructor: Eliese Goldbach is the author of Rust: A Memoir of Steel and Grit, which was published with Flatiron Books in 2020. She received an MFA in nonfiction from the Northeast Ohio Master of Fine Arts Program. Her writing has appeared in Ploughshares, Western Humanities Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Best American Essays 2017. She received the Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s Award and a Walter Rumsey Marvin Grant from the Ohioana Library Association, which is given to a young Ohio writer of promise. She lives in Cleveland, OH, with her husband.

Details: Shaping Stories: Intermediate Memoir Writing takes place Tuesdays February 1, 8, 15 & 22 from 6:30-8:30pm remotely through Zoom.

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