Memoir Writing Workshop for Veterans

Registration is open to Veterans/ active duty and their families, please. Participants are encouraged to attend all sessions.

To join this workshop virtually, register here. 

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Memoir is the art of the “examined life.” In this six-week workshop, participants will examine unique aspects of the memoir genre; practice elements of the craft of writing that are useful in writing memoir, such as structure, character, time, setting, and pacing; and complete generative writing exercises that will help spark participants’ creativity and suggest direction for future writing. The facilitator, Jerri Bell, may assign short readings for group discussion.

Session 1: Introduction to memoir, finding your story’s timeline

Session 2: Character in memoir

Session 3: Setting and specific details; the role of memory

Session 4: Desire and change (“plot”); handling time

Session 5: Point of view, ekphrastic writing from photographs

Session 6: Writing trauma, writing life

 

Jerri Bell is the Managing Editor for O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal of the Veterans Writing Project. She retired from the Navy in 2008; her assignments included antisubmarine warfare in the Azores Islands, sea duty on USS Mount Whitney and HMS Sheffield, and attaché duty at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, Russia. Her work has been published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She and former Marine Tracy Crow are the co-authors of It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan; her book on the first African American women to serve officially in the US armed forces is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books.

This event has been sponsored by a grant from Texas A &M University, Libraries & Veterans National Forum.

Photo: Sailors and Marines conduct flight operations off of Vietnam, 1966. Credit: USN.

Please register with an email address to receive an immediate registration confirmation with a link to join the class/event.