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This coming September, on an old farm in McClure, PA, a group of
very-wow writers will be sitting at a big old table in a fabulously idiosyncratic barn talking about Hope Jahren's
Lab Girl to kick off Juncture's inaugural memoir workshop.
My thoughts about this near-perfect memoir are
here today, in the
Chicago Tribune. There are just four spaces now left in our workshop. If you're interested in the workshop or in the newsletter, please
click on this link and let us know.
In 2016 I'll be rolling out a traveling memoir workshop series—a multi-day immersive event that will focus not just on finding the kind of truth I explore in
Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, but on pinning it effectively to the page. We'll be conducting these workshops against the backdrop of especially beautiful places and using a surprising range of tools and readings to get to the heart of our stories.
If you are interested in learning more, please let me know with a comment here.
I spent my birthday in Frenchtown, NJ, this past April and fell so hard for the place that I wrote about it in the
Philadelphia Inquirer. Which led to an unexpected email from Caroline, an owner of the town's indie, the Book Garden, inviting me to return to this river town this November. I'll be conducting a memoir workshop and meeting with students in area schools. The memoir workshop, described above, will be held November 15 from 1 to 4 PM at The National Hotel. It has limited space, and if you are interested, I encourage you to sign up soon.
(For those unfamiliar with my memoir teaching and ideas, I share a link here to
Handling the Truth, my book about the making of memoir.)
A link to the page can be found
here.
Because the program intrigues me, because I believe good things can happen when like-minded people gather around a table to think about the past and what it means, I said yes to Kerry Malawista when she kindly invited me to conduct a full-day workshop on behalf of New Directions next spring.
We'll focus on senses—not just what we see, taste hear, smell, touch, but the power of heat and its absence, the causeways of pain, the prerequisites of balance and bodily awareness. I'll share the works of favorite poets and memoirists, launch small exercises, listen carefully to the emergent memories, help shape them.
Each participant will move, throughout the day, toward a single, honest, well-rendered moment—a memory that lives rightly on the page. We will, together, build a community. We'll reflect on some of the memoirs I discuss in
Handling the Truth: On the Writing of Memoir, and why they are essential to a writing life; we'll reflect on some brand-new titles, too.
A handful of personal critique sessions on manuscripts-in-progress will be offered during breaks.
If any of you are interested in participating, please leave a comment or send a note. I'll have more information shortly. For now:
Let us be honest: A Memoir Workshop
New Directions in Writing
http://newdirectionsinwriting.com
Residence Inn, Pentagon City, VA
April 23, 2014
9:00-5:00
More on New Directions in Writing:
. . . an innovative three-year postgraduate training program for writers, clinicians, and academics who want to develop their skill in writing with a psychological perspective. We have been of help to students who were novice writers and to others who were well-published authors, and to all those in-between. While most of our students have been psychoanalysts and psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapists, our student bodies have also included journalists, authors, and university faculty, among others.
In seasonal weekend conferences and optional summer and winter retreats, our community of students, alumni, teachers, and guest faculty come together to explore topics of psychological interest which stimulate our minds and enrich our writing. Each weekend has a specific topic focus, such as memory, play, trauma, gender, writers block, mourning, revenge and forgiveness, religion, boundary, children’s literature, evil, the body, music, neuroscience, projection, and imagining a life.
Writing helps us to think. Thinking helps us to write. But writing is the focus of the program.
This weekend, St. David's Episcopal Church in Radnor, PA, is celebrating the life of St. David, Patron Saint of Wales, who established the church (a glorious stone building about a mile from my home) three hundreds years ago. Photography, singing vicars, and literature are all part of the fare, and I'm honored to be included.
My own talk is a two-part talk. First up—a
Handling the Truth memoir workshop, in which participants will have a chance to learn about truth and consequences, sentences and ideas. Following a short break, I'll be discussing 19th century Philadelphia, particularly my three Philadelphia books—
Flow, Dangerous Neighbors, and
Dr. Radway's Sarsaparilla Resolvent. There will be workshops here as well—fun exercises designed to get us thinking about our city more than a century ago.
These events are free and open to the public. The photography exhibit runs all day today and tomorrow, and includes an 11:00 AM photography symposium moderated by Tom Petro tomorrow.
My event is being held on Sunday in the Choir Room, Chapel, Lower Level. We'll start at 1:30 and go through 4:00 PM. Stay for both sessions, or come just for one. Teens and adults are both welcome (and, indeed, encouraged).
Later this year, on August 6th,
Handling the Truth, my book about the making of memoir, the students I've taught, the many memoirs I've read, and the lessons I've learned, will be released by Gotham.
I'll be celebrating its release on launch day at the main branch of the Free Library of Philadelphia, where I will be offering not just a reading but a workshop opportunity.
Between now and then I'll be blogging about the new exercises I'm giving to my current University of Pennsylvania memoir class, the new/old memoirs I'm reading, and the debate that continues to swirl around this form. I'll notch these new exercises, reviews, and commentary onto the dedicated
Handling page after they appear here, so that that page will then serve as a supplemental repository.
Because no book about writing, especially, is ever really done.
I'll be joining the writers of Agnes Irwin on the sloping terrain of Chanticleer today; we'll be at work on memoir. Last night, while again not sleeping, I found these words in Natalie Goldberg's
Old Friend from Far Away. They are the right place to begin.
"We are a dynamic country, fast-paced, ever-onward. Can we make sense of love and ambition, pain and longing? In the center of our speed, in the core of our forward movement, we are often confused and lonely. That's why we have turned so full-heartedly to the memoir form. We have an intuition that it can save us. Writing is the act of reaching across the abyss of isolation to share and reflect.... Often without realizing it, we are on a quest, a search for meaning. What does our time on this earth add up to?"
By: Beth Kephart ,
on 4/22/2016
I love that you'll be posting some of the exercises you give your students :) I can be a small, vicarious participant.
To quote a famous ketchup song..."Anticipation is keeping me waiting."
To quote a famous ketchup song..."Anticipation is keeping me waiting."
This is true generosity! Your launch journey has begun. Am so glad you're going to share it all here.
Great idea!
Congratulations in advance!