Quebec Writers' Federation Workshops

Spring Session 2009

Develop your writing with the mentorship of an acclaimed professional writer and feedback from your peers.

Workshops take place at the QWF office, Suite 3, Atwater Library unless otherwise indicated.

MEMOIR: THE ART OF PERSONAL WRITING

Eight Tuesdays, 8:00 to 10:00 p.m (March 3–April 21)

1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Workshop leader: Joel Yanofsky

Memoir is the art of inventing the truth.
–William Zinsser

If only I could invent as presumptuously as life.
–Philip Roth

"When you use memories as a source, they're no different from any source—the composition still has to be made," E.L. Doctorow said. We will take this as our starting point and look at a variety of forms of personal writing, but the emphasis will be on transforming memory, the raw material of life, into compelling stories.

While there will undoubtedly be some lecturing by me—try and stop me—as well as some discussion of class handouts, this is, first and foremost, a workshop course. Priority will be given to discussing your work in class. There will be assignments, but you will also be encouraged to bring work you feel is appropriate. For the sake of time and efficiency, limits will be put on the length of the work discussed. Participants will also be expected to photocopy their own work.

Finally, if we begin with the assumption—a safe one, I am convinced—that everyone has a story to tell, our challenge becomes to find that story and to find the best way to tell it and make it interesting to others. That said, each of you will be encouraged to tell your own stories in the way that's best suited to you.

Joel Yanofsky is the author of Homo Erectus… And Other Popular Tales of True Romance, Jacob's Ladder, and Mordecai & Me: An Appreciation of a Kind. Mordecai & Me won the QWF's 2003 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction. He's written for a wide variety of publications and is a book reviewer for the Montreal Gazette, where he also writes a business column. His personal essays, "What You Need" and "Bad Day", won the 2008 QWF/CBC Prize and The Malahat Review's Creative Non-fiction Prize for 2008 respectively. His latest project, Love U: The Grad School Musical, was performed in California last year.

back