Writing the Memoir-in-Essays

A memoir-in-essays is a book length work of linked essays, typically organized around a specific motif, idea, or topic. It is an essay collection that also reveals the interiority of the author and some part of their life, and answers the question “Is this a memoir, or an essay?” with one word: yes.

Thanks to its modular form, the memoir-in-essays allows a writer to make bold moves with time, theme, and chronology, and demands that they make clear the connections between the individual essays that make up the book. It uses the self and the world as two points in a dialogue of ideas, letting personal narrative serve as a way into ideas.

To write a memoir-in-essays, you need several things: a story, an idea, and a connection between them. What part of your life do you want to put on the page as a space in which to explore your idea? What idea feels resonant with the events you’ve lived and witnessed? And, crucially, how does your lived experience illuminate, complicate, or deepen your understanding of the ideas you wish to essay into?

In this course, you will read deeply into contemporary memoir-in-essays, explore the connections between your obsessions and your experiences, and learn craft tools for how to start or continue your own memoir-in-essays. You will respond to guided prompts and exercises that will help you unpack exactly how you want to frame your material, and you’ll consider how to establish voice, tone, pace, and perspective via group discussions and generative writing practices. You’ll leave the course with the groundwork set for your memoir-in-essay, and a plan for how to build and develop it.

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this class, you will:

• Learn the craft differences between memoir and essay, and how to join them in a memoir-in-essays
• Learn how to envision an overarching theme, idea, or motif in your memoir-in-essays
• Gain an understanding of the formal choices available to you for assembling your material
• Develop skills at differentiating between narrator and character

Writing Goals

In this class, you will:

• Develop an idea for your memoir-in-essays
• Articulate and plan the structure of your book-length work
• Write from prompts to begin or continue your memoir-in-essays
• Create pages toward your eventual draft

Zoom schedule

Class will meet for 2hrs per week, on Mondays July 22 + 29, 7-9pm Eastern. Our sessions will include a craft talk, group discussion, reading talk + discussion, generative prompts and synchronous writing time, and optional sharing of pages.

Weekly Syllabus

WEEK ONE: What is This Thing: Intro to the Memoir-in-Essays

What is a memoir-in-essays, and why am I hearing about it a lot lately? This week, we’ll learn about the growing popularity of this liminal, genre-crossing genre of nonfiction.

We’ll talk about some of the literary elements of the memoir-in-essays: personal narrative, critical analysis, structure, and narrative design. We’ll talk about our craft and creative readings and how they relate to our own work, and you’ll start to put on the page a plan for your own memoir-in-essays.

The independent work for this week will be to work on your pages. You’ll receive guided exercises that you can use as they serve you, and when we meet for our next session, we’ll spend some time processing what came up during your independent work.

WEEK TWO: The Shape Is the Thing: Structure in the Memoir-in-Essays

This week, we’ll focus on how to structure what is essentially a modular narrative. We’ll talk a lot about time and how to manage it, chronology and its pros and cons, and the craft opportunities you can make out of time and narrative distance.

$195.00Enroll Now