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Reading & Writing a Memoir of Social Justice Michael Klein Live Workshop
Nonfiction
June 15-19, 2026
Tiered Tuition
$250-$600 Reserve My Spot
About the Offering
At one point in my writing memoirs, I got some sage advice from my mentor who said that it was time to extend my reach to the world beyond self with writing that let in more of the world. In this way, she was advocating for finding and using language to talk about justice, war, race, the earth, the animals, the environment, but also language to talk about the engagement with one’s inner life / inner spirit and how that puts an individual vision in context with self and collective history.
In this workshop, we will read the work of writers including Arundhati Roy, Chase Twitchell, Ilya Kaminsky, James Baldwin and others that face the world as it is in real time and generate new work that faces that same world while applying our singular vision, despair and hope.
About the Instructor/Moderator

Michael Klein has written five books of poetry, including, The Early Minutes of Without: New & Selected Poems. His new book, Happiness Ruined Everything: Essays has just been published by Galileo Press. He is a five-time finalist and two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award in poetry, for his first book, 1990, and for editing the seminal anthology, Poets for Life: 76 Poets Respond to AIDS. He is also the author of two books of autobiography, Track Conditions, a memoir about his time on the racetrack, and The End of Being Known, essays on sex and friendship. His work has appeared in POETRY, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, Tin House, Bennington Review, FENCE, LA Review of Books, Poets & Writers and many other publications. He has taught writing at Sarah Lawrence College, Binghamton University, Hunter College, the Fine Arts Work Center Summer and for more than 20 years, as part of the MFA-in-Writing faculty at Goddard College. He currently works as a consultant and editor for people working on memoirs and poetry manuscripts.