LitPDX seeks to amplify marginalized voices, and welcomes all, their ideas, their events, and their words.
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Stamp Collecting: Another Approach to Memoir Writing
September 24, 2022 @ 10:00 am - 1:00 pm
$145Do you think in lengthy narrative strands, elegantly formed with a beginning, middle and an end? I don’t. I flit from image, to feeling, to recrimination, to joy. Light flickers over my memories, both happy and hard. I call these messy memories ‘stamps,’ events or moments that have imprinted upon me in unshakeable ways.
In this workshop we will mimic our thinking on the page. We’ll write short pieces from our lives using strong storytelling techniques to enliven specific moments that changed us. We won’t be writing anecdotes, the funny stories we may tell a friend on a walk or a seatmate on a long flight. We will be writing the stories from our lives that haunt us, with joy and sorrow and growth. Finally, we will look at how to arrange these stamps from our lives into a long narrative that tells the complex story of you.
The workshop will include writing samples (Beth Ann Fennelly, Natasha Tretheway, Michelle Zauner, Nick Flynn, Anne-Marie Oomen, Kiese Laymon, + more) discussions, prompt responses, and sharing our work.
Access Program
We want our writing classes and Delves to be accessible to everyone, regardless of income and background. We understand that our tuition structure can present obstacles for some people. Our Access Program offers writing class and Delve tuitions at a reduced rate. The access program for writing classes covers 60% of the class tuition. Most writing classes have at least one access spot available.
Please apply here for access rate tuition. Contact Susan Moore at susan@literary-arts.org if you have questions.
Natalie Serber is the author of a memoir, Community Chest, and a story collection, Shout Her Lovely Name, a New York Times Notable Book of 2012, a summer reading selection from O, the Oprah Magazine, and an Oregonian Top 10 Book of the Pacific Northwest. Her fiction has appeared in The Greensboro Review, The Bellingham Review, Gulf Coast, Inkwell, and elsewhere. Essays and reviews have appeared in The New York Times, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Huffington Post and others. Natalie has been short listed in Best American Short Stories. She received her MFA from Warren Wilson College. Visit her online at natalieserber.com.