LIVE via ZOOM: 12pm-2pm (Eastern) —

Do you suspect the most urgent story you have to tell is your own, but fear that writing a memoir is too vulnerable an undertaking? Do you fear being thought unserious or self-indulgent?

Too often we take for granted the false binary between the personal and the intellectual. A literary work’s aesthetic or intellectual merit does not preclude catharsis, nor concerns of domestic, corporeal, or “confessional” nature. Why shouldn’t a literary examination of the navel approach profound universalities, be intellectually astute, politically powerful, and aesthetically great?

In this seminar, we will take a long hard look into our own navels, write from places of intimate experience, interrogate our own inherited biases, and consider why personal writing might be exactly what we need right now. This two-hour seminar will provide a combination of lecture, discussion, generative exercises, and Q&A. There will be opportunities for sharing, but this is not a workshop and no feedback will be given.