What are you planning for the fall of 2019? How are you closing out the last few months of the year? How are you getting yourself closer to completing that essay and/or that memoir? Writing Our Lives is here to help! 

When: October 19, 12pm-5pm

Where: NYC

How much: By Donation (Suggested Donation: $50)

How to register: By application

You want to write the stories of your life but don’t know where to start. 

You’ve wondered: How do I write these stories that haunt me? What do I need to write them? How do I decide what to write?  

Personal essays are everywhere. Some say their heyday is over but their popularity hasn’t abated. Still, there’s much more to writing a personal essay than chronicling a wild or salacious experience. The best personal essays invite the reader in and show how an experience changed the author through vivid sensory details, engaging scenes and well-developed characters.

In this class, we’ll break down the specific elements that make an essay great, we’ll read model essays, and we’ll do a ton of writing.

This class is also for you hoping-to-be memoir writers. My approach is to focus on the micro (the personal essay) because you can take these tools into the writing of a longer piece, i.e. a memoir, essay collection, etc.

A few things:

* This class is capped at 20 students.

* The class is by application only. How to apply: Send an email to writingourlivesworkshop@gmail.com with “Writing Our Lives One Day Personal Essay Intensive” in the subject line. In the email, answer the following questions honestly and concisely. (Please keep your answers brief.):

1. Why are you interested in taking this class?
2. What do you hope to take from the class? 
3. This is a POC and indigenous centered space. What do you think this means and how do you feel about it?
4. Share anything else you want me to know about you.

You will receive notification by October 12th. 

If you are accepted, you are expected to: be on time and do the homework that will be sent to you in advance.