MEMORABLE MEMOIR: A SAN FRANCISCO MEMOIR WORKSHOP (5 WK)

You know your story. It’s about you, after all. But how do you make your tale so engaging that it pulls the reader in page after page? In this five-week San Francisco memoir workshop, successful memoirist Melissa Cistaro takes you behind the scenes, exploring techniques for making the truth more compelling than fiction. Though in-class lectures and writing exercises, you’ll explore the essential ingredients of memoir: story structure, character, and conflict, and take writing “what you know” to the next level. She’ll also show you how to write about painful experiences with humor and vulnerability and how to write about real-life villains with objectivity and balance. If you like, you can even bring in up to 1000 words of your memoir for targeted feedback each session for the in-person class! By the end of the class, you’ll have crafted several chapters of your memoir and made them so intriguing, agents will return your calls! Experienced and beginning writers welcome. Instructor: Melissa Cistaro Melissa Cistaro is the author of the memoir PIECES OF MY MOTHER (winner of the “Best Nonfiction Book of 2015” selected by The Northern California Independent Booksellers Association). Her stories, essays and interviews have appeared in The New Ohio Review, Brevity, The Huffington Post, Publisher’s Weekly, PBS: To the Contrary, Bookish, Good Housekeeping and the anthologies Love and Profanity and Cherished. Melissa graduated from UCLA and is an alum of the Tin House Writer’s Workshop in Portland. Dates: Sept. 18, 25, Oct. 2, 16, 23 (5 Sunday afternoons) 2:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.