Summer Workshop Program 2023
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 memoir Boy Erased (Penguin/Riverhead, 2016) and the forthcoming novel, Cana: a romance (Penguin/Riverhead). He is the creator and producer of the podcast Unerased: the History of Conversion Therapy in America (Stitcher, 2018). He has written for The New York Times, The Oxford American, The Independent, TIME, VICE, CNN, and others. Conley currently holds an Assistant Professor of Creative Writing position at Kennesaw State University and is the Executive Director of Georgia Writers. He is currently at work on a book of criticism and a novel.
