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.