24PearlStreet Workshops and Events
ASYNCHRONOUS with LIVE ELEMENTS
Annie Dillard once said You have to take pains not to hang on the reader’s arms, like a drunk,
and say, “And then I did this and it was so interesting.” What is it, exactly, that makes personal
narrative truly engaging? How do we navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a narrative that involves others? What makes great memoir what it is versus simply a recollection of experience or an information dump? In this generative memoir workshop, I will explore the concept of motivation and curation in the writing of memoir; together, we will focus on the separation of wheat from chaff within the narrative, and learn how to find the kernel–the heart of the story–that teems with life, even at its most deceptively subdued. Through readings, exercises, and the sharing of work, you will practice writing with intimacy and clarity, and learn to hone–and trust–your own distinct voices, and to find the extraordinary in the mundane. Readings will include Melissa Febos, Dani Shapiro, Paul Lisicky, Marie Howe, Emily Bernard, and others.
Please note that this is a rigorous workshop with assignments or exercises due each day. Participants will be expected to generate work while also devoting time to giving feedback to
their peers.
Submission of an 8-10 page manuscript is required prior to the class start date; email
to: ealtman@fawc.org
Optional LIVE elements: one Zoom meeting per week, at the end of every week, to give
workshoppers the chance to read their work.
Biography
Elissa Altman is the award-winning author of the upcoming hybrid
craft memoir, On Permission (Godine, 2024) and three
memoirs: Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man's Feast. Her work has
appeared in LitHub, Orion, Narrative, The Rumpus, On Being, The
Washington Post, and beyond, and has been widely anthologized. A
winner of the James Beard Award for narrative food writing, she has
appeared live on the TEDx stage, at the Public Theater in New York
with Wallace Shawn, regularly on NPR, and in 2020 was a finalist in
memoir for the Lambda, Connecticut, and Maine Literary Awards.
She lives in Connecticut.
