January 21st AND February 4th

11AM-3PM

Snacks provided.

In this workshop, you will be writing FLASH MEMOIR. Flash memoir is SHORT. You will be writing poignant, well-crafted autobiographical vignettes, basically, about the people, places, objects, moments that are unforgettable—that shaped your life.

The miniature, a working, functioning complete world unto itself, is not merely a "small" or "brief" thing, or a "shortened" form of something larger. Miniatures transcend their size, like small-but-vicious dogs, dense chunks of fudge, espresso, a drop of mercury, parasites. Finally, and most strangely to me, miniatures are radically self-sufficient. –Mary Carr

Exactly. You will write one to two-page personal narratives. We will take each short piece through a number of drafts. Using feedback from me and others in the class, you will whittle down your personal stories until you have almost a prose poem. No rambling. Yes, editing will be a major part of this workshop. You will capture details so magnificently, that any reader will be able to SEE what you are describing. You won’t be telling stories, you will be showing stories. Craft and clarity will be the ultimate goals. Individual pieces may be woven together later in a variety of ways that we will discuss. Also, we will discuss easy illustrations, even if you consider yourself not to be a visual artist. AND if you would like to keep working with me one-on-one after the classes, we can set that up.