Quebec Writers' Federation Workshops

Spring Session 2012

MEMOIR: THE ART OF PERSONAL WRITING

Eight Thursdays, 8:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m. (March 8 to April 26)

1200 Atwater Avenue, Suite 3
Workshop leader: Joel Yanofsky

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 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 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.

Finally, if we begin with the assumption – a safe one, I am convinced – that everyone has a story to tell, the 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.

Some of the topics covered will include:

• defining personal writing – from creative non-fiction to the personal essay
• the strategic “I”
• life as raw material or my “theory of stuff”
• the art of storytelling
• style and voice: or the art of showing off
• humour and sentiment
• revise, revise, revise
• marketing your work or the rule of three
• the ethics of personal writing: or who have I offended now?

Joel Yanofsky is the author of the essay collection Homo Erectus… And Other Popular Tales of True Romance, the novel Jacob’s Ladder, and the biography Mordecai & Me: An Appreciation of a Kind, which won the Mavis Gallant QWF Non-fiction Prize and The Canadian Jewish Book Award. His most recent book is the memoir Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism, which won the 2011 Mavis Gallant Non-fiction Prize and is short-listed for the B.C. National Award for Canadian Nonfiction. He’s a regular book reviewer for The Montreal Gazette and has won two National Magazine Awards as well as The Malahat Review’s Creative Non-fiction prize and the QWF/CBC Writing Competition. For more information, visit his website at joelyanofsky.com.

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