Writing Memoir with The New York Times (Online Course)

(EGL 304 W)

Writing a memoir brings up complicated issues: How can we look at an entire life and find a narrative arc? How do we engage the reader while also hewing to the truth of the past? How do we take all the chaos of experience and distill it into a story that is compelling and sharp? How can characters on the page have all the vitality and complexity of their real-life counterparts? In this compelling collaborative course, Katharine Noel, a writer and Stanford instructor, will co-teach a workshop with Amy Virshup, writer of the monthly "Newly Released" column for The New York Times. Students will read and discuss contemporary memoirs, and Virshup will evaluate a current memoir recently reviewed by The New York Times, illuminating what she thinks works –– and what doesn't. Students will also explore memoir writing through weekly exercises, culminating in a longer work –– either an essay-length memoir or a chapter of a book-length work. Students will receive critique and feedback on their writing from both Noel and Virshup. This is a unique opportunity to study the craft of memoir with both writer and critic.

This course is newly added and does not appear in our printed catalogue.

This is an online course.
For more information on additional online courses, please visit http://continuingstudies.stanford.edu/onlinewriting/.

Katharine Noel, Former Stegner Fellow and Jones Lecturer

Katharine Noel’s first novel, Halfway House, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice and won the 2006 Kate Chopin Award. Her short stories have been anthologized in Best New American Voices, Outside Rules, and elsewhere. She also teaches in the MFA Program in Writing at California College of the Arts.

Amy Virshup, Deputy Editor of the Culture section, The New York Times

Amy Virshup is the deputy editor of the Culture section at The New York Times and writes the monthly "Newly Released" books column for the paper. She was previously daily books editor for the Times. Her work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Wired, The Washington Post Magazine, Rolling Stone, and other national magazines. She has been an adjunct professor of journalism at New York University and a Knight Fellow at Stanford.

Preview the textbooks for this course:

Don't Let's Go to the Dogs Tonight, Fuller - ISBN 9780375758997

Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, Barrington - ISBN 0933377509

Best American Essays of the Century, Edited By: Joyce Carol Oates ISBN 0618155872