Writing Your Life

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Writing Your Life: A Workshop on Life Writing

Everyone has a story to tell. This workshop will focus on memoir, portraits/profiles, personal essays, and writing your life experiences. Writers of these types of essays often marry memory, experience, creative storytelling, playful language, and the factual.

Students in this course will read short examples of memoir, profiles, reflective essays, and obituaries, discussing the elements of writing from experience that make for evocative and meaningful reading. We will also learn about drafting, revision, and publishing strategies. This course is ideal for beginners, particularly those who have always wanted to write or share their story, but weren’t sure where to start. It is also a welcoming a supportive place for more experienced writers to meet others, build community, and share their own strategies. Each student will leave with the beginnings of a piece that they may continue to develop toward publication. The instructor is an Associate Professor of Writing and Rhetoric at George Mason University, with over three decades of publication experience in journalism, creative nonfiction, life writing, poetry, and academic writing.

Please bring a journal/notebook/pen or laptop/iPad, and your most creative self.  

About Michelle: Dr. Michelle LaFrance is an English Professor at George Mason University, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in writing, community writing, ethnography, feminist/cultural materialist and qualitative research methodologies. Michelle has published short stories, poetry, and essays, as well as academic books and articles. She writes the monthly Literary Hill column for The Hill Rag and serves as an Associate Editor for the Community Literacy Journal’s “Issues in Community Writing” section. She is working on a book about walking in the Historic Congressional Cemetery in Washington, DC. She is an avid home brewer, community gardener, and concert-goer. For more info about the classes, retreats, and one-on-one support she offers writers, please see writinglostriver.org.