2023 Summer Workshops
Feeling stuck? Some memoirists borrow from other genres when the steam runs out. Some write from another perspective, in another tense, even into another genre. This class will explore, through various memoir excerpts, the ways in which writers have raised the genre to new heights. We will also explore, through poetry and fiction, techniques memoirists can use to enrich narrative nonfiction. We will discuss how order and narrative distance can be adjusted to produce stronger sentences and deeper insight into the human condition. This class will be a combination of generative exercises, discussion, and traditional workshops.
Biography
Garrard Conley is the author of Boy Erased (Riverhead, 2016), now a major motion picture, and the creator and producer of the podcast Unerased: The History of Conversion Therapy in America (Stitcher/Limina House). His second book, a novel about queer 18th-century lives, is forthcoming. He has written for The New York Times, Oxford American, TIME, VICE, The Florida Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, among others. He serves as Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University.