Creative Nonfiction Workshop
Rebecca McClanahan’s twelfth book is Light Falls on Everything: A Daughter’s Memoir of Caregiving, Grief, and Possibility. Previous nonfiction books include In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essay; The Tribal Knot: A Memoir of Family, Community, and a Century of Change; The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings; andWord Painting: The Fine Art of Writing Descriptively.
Rebecca’s work has appeared in Best American Essays, Best American Poetry, and in anthologies published by Doubleday, Norton, Putnam, Penguin Random House, Beacon, St. Martin’s, and numerous other publishers.Recipient of two Pushcart Prizes and the Glasgow Award in Nonfiction, she teaches in the Queens University of Charlotte MFA Program.
Course Description
From Me-More to Memoir: Making Our Stories Their Own
Unlike autobiography, memoir “assumes the life and ignores most of it,” writes William Zinsser. Yet we writers often struggle with what to include, what to exclude, and how to shape a life-based narrative that invites readers in. Whether you are writing a personal essay, a hybrid piece, or a book-length work, this workshop will help you begin to select the most meaningful elements, discover alternate structures, and craft an engaging, artful text. Class time will be divided into discussions of required readings, brief craft lectures, generative writing activities, and guided responses to participants’ manuscripts. You may submit one stand-alone essay or an excerpt or chapter of a longer work; the maximum word limit is 4,500 words (no minimum).