24PearlStreet Workshops and Events
ASYNCHRONOUS with LIVE elements
Who am I to tell my story? The writing of memoir often begins with the daunting questions of permission, story ownership, and truth-telling, which together can keep the new memoirist from moving into a place where voice and story are free to emerge. In this generative workshop, we will tackle questions that will enable the new memoirist to move beyond the constraints of fear to a place of creative clarity. Come with a willingness to unravel process and permission, and an acknowledgement that the impulse to tell one’s story must be honored. We will read from seminal works including those by Mark Doty, Melissa Febos, Vivian Gornick, Ocean Vuong, and Emily Bernard. This is a rigorous workshop for intermediate writers who are wanting to take their work to the next level.
Please submit 10 pages of your memoir-in-progress to jjean@fawc.org two weeks before the workshop start date.
Optional LIVE elements: one Zoom meeting per week for 1.5 hours—day TBD.
Biography
Elissa Altman is the author of the new hybrid memoir Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, coming from Godine Books in March 2025, and the critically-acclaimed memoirs Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man's Feast. An award-winning contributor to publications including The Bitter Southerner, Orion, Narrative, LitHub, and the Washington Post, she is the winner of a James Beard Award in narrative food writing, and a finalist for a Lambda Award in memoir, and The Frank McCourt Prize in memoir. She teaches memoir and nonfiction writing at Fine Arts Work Center, Castle Hill Center for the Arts, College of William and Mary, and beyond.
