2024 Summer Workshops
Why does memoir have a reputation for being less “artful?” Surely anyone who has read Mary Karr or James McBride or any number of memoir titans has experienced the great literary pleasures found in our greatest works of fiction. This class will explore, through various memoir excerpts, the ways in which writers have raised the genre to new heights. We will also explore, through poetry and fiction, techniques memoirists can use to enrich narrative nonfiction. We will discuss how order and narrative distance can be adjusted to produce stronger sentences and deeper insight into the human condition. This class will be a combination of workshop, generative exercises, and discussion.
Please submit a 20 page (double-spaced, 12 pt. font) memoir or fiction manuscript to dwalsh@fawc.org by August 4. Also, please bring 6 copies of the same manuscript to the first class meeting.
Biography
Garrard Conley is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Boy Erased, which has been translated in over a dozen languages and is now a major motion picture. Conley is also a creator and producer of the podcast UnErased, which explores the history of conversion therapy in America. His work can be found in the New York Times, TIME, VICE, CNN, BuzzFeed, Them, Virginia Quarterly Review, and The Huffington Post.