Writing the Memoir-in-Essays: 6-Week Workshop

with Margo Steines

Writing the Memoir-in-Essays

January 22, 2025

Original price was: $495.00.Current price is: $425.00.

Zoom sessions Tuesdays from 7-8:30 PM Eastern

Original price was: $495.00.Current price is: $425.00.Enroll Now

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. We will move slowly, working through craft and process tools and practices week by week as you chip away at your own project. Our three last meetings will be workshop sessions where you will give and receive critical feedback on your peers’ work.

Note: Together we will read the memoir-in-essays The Leaving Season, by Kelly McMasters. This book is available as both a paperback and as a Kindle/ebook (and is widely available in libraries). I encourage you to obtain it as soon as possible—we’ll have our first chunk of reading due on the first day of class, and then we’ll move through the book as a group. If you have or anticipate any issues acquiring the book, please reach out to me or to the Writers.com staff. 

Who This Course is For: 

This is course is for all creative nonfiction writers (current and aspiring). If you wish to write in the memoir and essay forms, have a memoir you wish to hybridize into essays, have essays you want to cohere with narrative, and/or who like playing with form, Writing the Memoir-in-Essays is for you!

Learning and Writing Goals

Learning Goals

In this course, you will: 

  •  Study the structure and techniques of the memoir-in-essays genre through creative and craft-based exercises.
  • Generate new drafts toward your own memoir-in-essays while exploring practices of memoir and essay writing.
  • Develop practical techniques for organizing ideas and structures, such as using index cards and visual aids.
  • Learn to integrate personal narrative with outward-looking writing to connect seemingly unrelated ideas.
  • Discover how to identify and leverage the “textual currency” within your own memories, experiences, and curiosities.
  • Strengthen your ability to read as a writer and write as an editor, sharpening your focus on connections in ideas and language.

Writing Goals

  • You will set a personal writing goal at course start, depending on your personal writing pace. Most students can expect to leave the course with a full working draft of a single essay, and an outline and plan for the remaining essays in your memoir-in-essays.

Zoom Schedule

We meet on Zoom each Tuesday beginning January 28 from 7-8:30 PM Eastern.

Weekly Syllabus

Week One: Introductions and Overview

In this initial onboarding session, we’ll meet each other and you’ll have the opportunity to introduce your work to the group. We’ll outline our foundational writing practice and define terms and goals for our work together.

Homework: Complete daily pages on ideas for your memoir-in-essays, and weekly reading assignment. 

Week Two: Memoir and Personal Narrative

This week’s work will focus on first-person narrative. We’ll consider interiority, storytelling, and perspective and talk about how to bring our lived experiences into our work on the page.

Homework: Draft new pages on your memoir-in-essays, and the weekly reading assignment. 

Week Three: Essay and Cultural Criticism

This week’s work will focus on the outward-looking elements of the memoir-in-essays. We’ll consider idea writing, the voice of authority, and thematics and talk about how to bring our private obsessions into our work on the page.

Homework: Draft new pages on your memoir-in-essays, complete the weekly reading assignment, and prepare for next week’s workshop. 

Week Four: Research for the Memoir-in-Essays

This week, we’ll focus our discussions on research for the memoir-in-essays, picking up where we started the week before. We’ll also have our first feedback session, where we’ll workshop 1-2 class drafts.  

Homework: Complete experiential/immersion research, draft new pages, and complete workshop prep.

Week Five: Structuring and Editing: Bringing Shape and Precision to Your Pages

This week, we’ll focus our discussions on developmental and structural editing. We’ll have our second feedback session, where we’ll workshop 1-2 class drafts.  

Homework: Draft new pages on your memoir-in-essays, complete the weekly reading assignment, and prepare for next week’s workshop. 

Week Six: Workshop

This week, we’ll devote all our time to workshopping our remaining class drafts. I’ll provide you with some offboarding practices to help you keep your momentum going after class wraps.  

Original price was: $495.00.Current price is: $425.00.Enroll Now

Course type:

Student Feedback for Margo Steines:

Margo embodies a certain intense passion for the work of writing. It feels like she’s right there for each student, a straight forward but kind and knowledgeable partner. This course came at the perfect moment. Carol A Thomas

The course was a joy. I’m quiet by nature, but by the end of it, I found myself not only with the confidence to participate but eager to so do. It was well structured, and everyone was given a chance to contribute. Margo’s knowledge, experience, and empathy created a safe space for discussing sensitive subjects that left me not only more confident in my writing about such a challenging subject but with broader insights into life as a whole. You can’t ask for more than that. James Boud

Margo’s course was expertly structured. Her weekly readings and discussions accumulated into a satisfying intro to the literature. And her essay creation process gave me a draft and a system for making more. Ashley Walker

I found myself inspired by the weekly readings and found Margo’s teaching style to be really effective. I came away from the class feeling like a whole new creative channel has been opened for me. Workshop discussions were lively and the class was engaged. Plus, I left her class with an essay that I’m really proud to have written. Jessica Fiorillo

Margo writes with insight and incisiveness you feel in your gut. Reading her work reminds me that I am human and alive and not alone in feeling what I feel. It’s a privilege to read Margo and also to be edited by her. She’s a thoughtful editor who possesses both empathy and sharp instincts, which do not always appear in the same package. She knows how to ask you thought-provoking questions about your work that lead you to your own solutions. Rachel Reeves, journalist

Margo is an extraordinary teacher, with extremely helpful lectures, writing prompts, and course structure. This was one of the most helpful workshops I have ever participated in. I found her extremely generous and accessible with her time, and she created a class atmosphere that felt respectful and engaging. Highly recommend! Mary Simpson

Margo is a great teacher. Very professional, supportive and knowledgeable. Very sensitive dealing with a difficult topic. She created a warm and supportive Zoom environment for those who attended. Ariela Zucker

January 22, 2025

Original price was: $495.00.Current price is: $425.00.

Early Bird! Enroll now & save 15%

Zoom sessions Tuesdays from 7-8:30 PM Eastern

Original price was: $495.00.Current price is: $425.00.Enroll Now

margo steines headshot

About

Margo Steines is a native New Yorker, a journeyman ironworker, and serves as mom to a wildly spirited small person.

Margo holds an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Arizona and lives and writes in Tucson. Her work was named Notable in Best American Essays and has appeared in The Sun, Brevity, Off Assignment, The New York Times (Modern Love), the anthology Letter to a Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, and elsewhere. She is the author of the memoir-in-essays Brutalities: A Love Story.

Margo is faculty at the University of Arizona Writing Program and is also a private creative coach and creative writing class facilitator. You can read more about her practices at margosteines.com.