Unveiling Life: A Journey Through Memoir Writing

1. Writers Workshop Introduction to Memoir

2. Life writing • Memoir is a kind of LIFE WRITING • Life writing: the recording of selves, memories, experiences (yours or someone else’s) • many genres and practices: autobiography, biography, memoir, diaries, journals, letters, testimonies, personal essays, blogs, e-mails, and so on

3. What is a Memoir? • Nonfiction • A kind of autobiographical writing (writing about yourself) • Captures particular scenes of life and often a reflection on meaning (i.e., ‘so what?’) • It’s not about every single thing that ever happened to you (that’s autobiography) • There may be more room to experiment than in autobiography • More exterior than an autobiography: includes other people, events you’ve witnessed, your place in your culture

4. odds ‘n’ ends • degrees of accuracy/truth? • what a memoir looks/sounds like • famous memoirs: Angela’s Ashes , A Million Little Pieces, Woman Warrior, The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-time Indian, A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

5. To do! • Select an item from writing territories list – involving some kind of life story • write a mini-memoir • Title: Quickwrite #1 • I will read excerpts of memoirs to you…