ENGL 309 - Advanced Creative Writing: Memoir

FDR: HA
Credits: 3 in fall and winter, 4 in spring
Planned Offering: Winter 2012 and alternate years

Prerequisite: Three credits in 200-level English and instructor consent. A workshop in writing memoir, requiring regular writing practice and outside readings. Students read and study a range of memoir written in English; analyze literary forms and complex language; write imaginatively; respond critically in peer workshops orally and in writing; produce a portfolio of writing based on assignments. Topic for Winter 2012: ENGL 309: Advanced Creative Writing: Writing the Memoir (3). Flannery O’Connor once said that any writer who could survive childhood had enough material to write about for a lifetime. Memoir is a mosaic form, utilizing bits and pieces from autobiography, fiction, essay and poetry in ways that allow the author to muse (speculate, imagine, remember, and question) on their own life experiences. Modern literary memoir requires tremendous work from the author, as she moves both backward and forward in time, re-creates believable dialogue, switches back and forth between scene and summary, and controls the pace and tension of the story with lyricism or brute imagery. In short, the memoirist keeps her reader engaged by being an adept and agile storyteller. This is not straight autobiography. Memoir is more about what can be gleaned from a section of one’s life than about chronicling an entire life. Like a mosaic, memoir is about the individual pieces as much as the eventual whole. We read memoirists, freewriting, and workshopping in and out of class. (HA) Miranda Miranda.