Courses

At heart, every memoir is a story about time—how we remember it and how we guide the reader through it. Yet shaping time on the page is one of the memoirist’s toughest challenges. Writing chronologically doesn’t always work, but creating a nonlinear story without losing clarity can be difficult. In this course, you’ll discover how time can serve as the foundation of your memoir’s structure, exploring strategies to shape individual chapters and build coherence and momentum across the whole. We’ll study acclaimed memoirs like Jesmyn Ward’s Men We Reaped, Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House, and Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water to see how each bends time to powerful effect. Through lectures, prompts, and workshopping of up to 6,000 words, you’ll leave with strategies for using time as your memoir’s architect—and a stronger sense of how best to guide readers through your story.