Getting that memoir off the ground

Lots of people have interesting life stories to tell. The hard part? Getting those stories down on paper so that others can read — and reread — them.

As the writers in the memoir classes I lead for the City of Chicago, Lincoln Park Village and at Grace Place in Printers Row master the art of writing about their lives, they find themselves with a new challenge: assembling finished stories into book form.

Our Thursday Lincoln Park Village memoir class celebrated Anna Perlberg’s book over lunch at the home of writers Bruce and Anne Hunt yesterday.

Mike wrote a post last week about The publication of Anna Perlberg’s memoir The House in Prague. Anna Perlberg is a writer in my Thursday afternoon Lincoln Park Village memoir class, and her success is motivating other writers to think about getting their memoirs published as well. Their questions about publishing inspired me to put together a memoir workshop for The Northwestern University Summer Writers’ Conference this year on Northwestern University’s Chicago campus.

This year’s conference starts July 28, 2016 and runs until July 30, 2016.

My 90-minute workshop, called Getting Your Memoir Off the Ground meets from 9:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. on Saturday, July 30, 2016. I plan on giving a couple in-class exercises and discussing techniques to get past whatever it is that’s stopping writers from getting their work done, whether it be worries about writing as a victim, facing issues that come with writing about people we love, or figuring out strategies for organizing the raw material of our lives into book form. The overall emphasis will be on craft and on overcoming the barriers that keep us from writing and assembling our stories.

Each workshop at the Northwestern Summer Writers’ Conference is limited to 18 participants, and you can take advantage of early bird registration rates through June 30, 2016. I’ll be participating on a panel at this year’s conference, too — it meets on Friday afternoon and is something new for me:

Writing from the Intersection of the Personal and the Political
Beth Finke, Jarrett Neal, Nnedi Okorafor
This panel will explore the implicit and explicit political response and/or motivation behind fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

I haven’t met either of my fellow panelists yet, but from their bios I know that Jarrett Neal has had his poems, fiction, essays, and reviews in publications like the Good Men Project, The Gay and Lesbian Review, Chelsea Station, Best Sex Writing 2015, Requited Journal, and New City.

Nnedi Okorafor was born in the United States to two Nigerian immigrant parents, and she’s an international award-winning novelist of African-based science fiction, fantasy and magical realism for both children and adults. Nnedi is also one of the keynote speakers at this year’s conference. I am honored to be selected to appear with these two accomplished writers. Trust me, I’ll be doing a lot more listening than talking during that panel.