I have been teaching the craft of memoir for the past ten years because I’m in love with this genre. 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.
Write Your Memoir in Six Months
In 2010, I launched Write Your Memoir in Six Months with Linda Joy Myers, President of the National Association of Memoir Writers. We teach six-month intensives that go from January to June and June to December every year. Check out our site and the program details here.
Magic of Memoir
Magic of Memoir started out as a book and in-person conferences and expanded dramatically since the pandemic into 6-week craft boot camps and other courses. We teach a bestselling memoir series that supports writers to learn from New York Times bestselling memoirists—and we’ve brought the best of the best to our memoir programs, including Kiese Laymon (coming spring 2022), Elizabeth Gilbert, Jacqueline Woodson, Lidia Yuknovitch, Dani Shapiro, and many others. Our Magic of Memoir classes are always about pushing the envelope on memoir-writing, and we have new offerings every spring and fall. Check out our site here, and sign up for my newsletter to stay up to date on these offerings.
Best-Selling Memoir Series
I co-teach with Linda Joy Myers a regular best-selling memoir class, 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!
Linda Joy Myers and I have posted a lot of videos over the years on YouTube, and we 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.”