About the Workshop

People don’t just happen. In this workshop, students will explore the capacity of memoir to illuminate their understanding of memory, connection, and self-making. This class is as invested in the craft of writing as it is in interrogating how storytelling functions within systems of power. Students will be asked to consider what the work is doing to us, and what we are using our own work to do to others. Classes will alternate between workshop discussions of student drafts submitted at the beginning of the week, in-class writing exercises and close readings of nonfiction.

About the Instructor

Saeed Jones is the author of the memoir HOW WE FIGHT FOR OUR LIVES (Simon & Schuster), winner of the 2019 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and the poetry collection PRELUDE TO BRUISE (Coffee House Books), winner for the 2015 PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award for Poetry. His poetry and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Oxford American and GQ among other publications. His most recent book ALIVE AT THE END OF THE WORLD (Coffee House Press) won the 2023 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry. Jones teaches at the Media, Health and Medicine program at Harvard Medical School and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His next book HOME OUT THERE, a memoir, is forthcoming from Washington Square Press. He co-hosts the podcast VIBE CHECK with Zach Stafford.