During Ann Hood’s memoir course you will work toward completing a final, personal essay through a series of short, guided assignments. Using these weekly writing exercises – focused on specific topics as stepping-stones – you will learn to hone your ideas, settings, characters and dialogue to build emotional impact into your personal stories.

Each week will begin with my introduction of a topic for that week’s memoir assignment. Topics will include Food, Place, Love, and Loss. I will email you examples from writers I admire such as Jonathan Lethem, JoAnn Beard, Cheryl Strayed, and Tony Early and discuss how they have accomplished writing these strong essays. How did they introduce their idea? How did they develop it? How did they use characters, dialogue, setting, metaphor and other elements of the craft to achieve their emotional impact? You will write an essay on that topic and share it with the class. Their comments–along with mine–will provide a forum for discussion. I will also have a one on one email conversation with you in which I will offer suggestions for revision. These short exercises will be the building blocks for your final personal essay. You might expand one of the shorter pieces, or combine several of them, or use them as a springboard to a new topic. Although you don’t need to have workshop experience for this class, you must feel comfortable with literary discussion at the intermediate level.