I have been teaching the craft of memoir for the past fifteen years. I first started working on memoirs during my tenure at Seal Press, where I edited works by Susie Bright, Jessica Valenti, Kate Bornstein, Julia Serano, and Kerry Cohen, among others. Working with memoirists was a turning point in my life and my career because I discovered the unique power real-life stories have to impact readers’ lives and effect change in the world.
Monthly Classes at Memoir Nation
Memoir Nation launched in 2025—and out the gate has had phenomenal monthly classes with teachers/memoirists like Maggie Smith, Mark Nepo, Carvell Wallace, Sue William Silverman, and others. You can get all monthly classes with a paid membership, or buy classes a la carte. Check out our monthly offerings!
Write Your Memoir in Six Months
In 2010, I launched Write Your Memoir in Six Months with Linda Joy Myers. I am now teaching this class on my own every six moths, from January to June and June to December every year. Check out the program details here.
Best-Selling Memoir Series
Over the years, I’ve co-taught many best-selling memoir classes with my colleague Linda Joy Myers of National Association of Memoir Writers, focusing on a New York Times best-selling memoir and using those books to highlight what those authors did well to teach memoirists how to deepen their craft. This spring 2022 we are teaching Heavy, by Kiese Laymon (details here), and we’re currently highlighting The Tender Bar, since the film is debuting in 2022. To date we have taught Wild; Eat, Pray, Love, The Glass Castle; Angela’s Ashes; The Liars’ Club; H Is for Hawk; Inheritance; and many others. Many of these courses are available to purchase.
Mastering Structure
For sale at the excellent price of $29.95 is our 4-session Mastering Structure course. Linda Joy and I are currently working on a short series of memoir primers, and Mastering Structure is the first up. Dive into a deeper understanding of memoir structure with this class, for sale here.
Free on YouTube!
I’ve posted a lot of videos over the years on YouTube, and I invite you to watch as many as you want. They can be found on my YouTube channel, and/or by Googling my name and “memoir.”
You can also find “All Things Memoir” and the Memoir Nation podcast on Memoir Nation’s YouTube channel.