Summer Writing Retreat 2024: “Finding Clarity in Memoir: Permission, Story Ownership & Truth-Telling” with Elissa Altman
July 9, 2024 - July 30, 2024
$269.00 – $409.00
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This Event is for Members only.
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Level 1 (Class Only): $269 for Members, $329 for Non-Members
Level 2 (Class + Private Consultation): $349 for Members, $409 for Non-Members*
*To access the member price, please be sure to log in to your account.
This July, join us for our virtual 2024 Summer Writing Retreat featuring three classes on memoir, fiction, and revision plus lots of special events throughout the month, including registration for a Saturday Craft Seminar with author Steve Almond (July 13; includes a copy of the book), weekly presentations and meet-ups, and dedicated writing time.
Each class will meet weekly for four weeks, starting the week of July 8, ending the week of July 29. Our memoir class with Elissa Altman will meet every Tuesday (July 9, 16, 23, 30) from 6:30 PM CDT to 9:30 PM CDT via Zoom. A recording of each class session will be shared with all class registrants the day after – so you won’t miss anything even if you need to skip a session. Class details are below.
Registration for this class will close at 5:00 PM CDT on Tuesday, July 9.
The writing of memoir often begins with the daunting questions of permission, story ownership, and truth-telling, which together can keep the writer from moving into a place where voice and story are free to emerge and the work of crafting their story can truly begin.
In this 4-week class, we will tackle questions and explore creative processes that will enable students to move beyond any constraints to a place of creative clarity. Each class session will jump off from a question or questions aimed at finding clarity around a specific aspect of the memoir writing process. This will include examining the writer’s motivation, identifying the key characters and their narrative arcs, considering the best ways to approach time, tense, and point of view, and more. Throughout the four weeks, we will read from seminal works including those by Mark Doty, Melissa Febos, Vivian Gornick, Emily Bernard, and others.
Students are asked to show up with a willingness to unravel process and permission, and an acknowledgement that the impulse to tell one’s story must be honored. Throughout the four weeks, we will read from seminal works including those by Mark Doty, Melissa Febos, Vivian Gornick, Emily Bernard, and others.
About each session:
Week 1 (July 9): Story Ownership: Understanding the Process of Narrative Inquiry: In this first session we’ll look at storytelling versus craft as we examine important questions every memoirist faces around story ownership, including “Why must I tell this story?,” “What is the core of the story?,” and “What are the words trying to do?”
Week 2 (July 16): What is the Story You are Trying to Craft?: This session will be devoted to an examination of permission and why it exists in art-making. What is the story you are trying to tell, and how vital are the secrets — if there are any — to the story on the whole? Must they be told, or are you writing from a place of revenge/sadness/joy/rage/fury? What is the point of view of the narrator?
Week 3 (July 23): Understanding Your Motivation, Your Characters, and How They Move Through the Story: In this session, Who are your characters (even though this is memoir)? Is the narrator staying in the story? Is the story autobiography or memoir? How can the writer separate themself enough from the narrator to create context and distance, allowing the story to move into a place of clarity?
Week 4 (July 30): Voice and its Impact on Permission and the Heart of the Story: Staying within voice, or stepping out; working with issues of time, tense, and point of view. How does changing tense create distance or intimacy? How does it diffuse issues of permission to allow for creative transcendence?
Take this class if…:
…you are at the start of a memoir project, are finding yourself stuck in the middle, or are ready to begin revising; if you’re running up against the most common elephant in the room – the belief that your story is not yours to tell because someone or something has told you that. This class is for all levels.
Preparation for the first day of class:
Registrants will be asked to read Mark Doty’s essay “Return to Sender” and sections of Vivian Gornick’s The Situation and the Story ahead of the first class.
Registration details:
Choose your registration level:
Level 1 (Class Only): $269 for Members, $329 for Non-Members
OR
Level 2 (Class + Private Consultation): $349 for Members, $409 for Non-Members
The difference: Level 2 (Class + Private Consultation) registrations include one 20-minute meeting with Elissa Altman sometime during the month (via Zoom). If you’d like, you can also share 10 pages of your work for feedback ahead of the meeting.
You may register online, or download the mail-in registration form here.
Instructor
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Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, Poor Man’s Feast, and her upcoming hybrid memoir about permission and creativity, On Permission, coming in winter 2025. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut Book Award, and Maine Literary Award for memoir, Altman’s essays have appeared in Orion, Narrative, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, where her column, Feeding My Mother, ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission and the creative spirit, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at the Fine Arts Work Center, Orion, Maine Media College, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, College of William and Mary, and internationally. She lives in Connecticut with her family.
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