Hot Spots: Memoir and Autobiography
Hot Spots: Spring 2011
Adventures in Writing Memoir and Personal Experience
With Erin Jourdan
-- Adventures in Memoir and Personal Experience is for anyone who wishes to explore narrative based on personal experience--whether through journaling, creating a personal essay, or basing fiction on real life events. This class will focus on writing exercises, techniques, external exploration, seeking source material, and workshopping based on "hot spots." In addition, there will be short readings of memoir examples & styles by memoirists such as--
David Sedaris, Nick Flynn, Mary Karr, George Orwell, Isabelle Eberhardt, Jeannette Walls, Tobias Wolff, Joan Didion, Spalding Gray, Vivian Gornick, Alison Bechdel, & Mariane Satrapi.
This class will not look to correct or provide criticism, but instead investigate places of emotional upheaval that we can delve into through writing, aka -- a "hot spot." Together we will delve into the well of memory and learn new techniques for getting our adventure, loss, happiness, and wisdom down on the page. Mondays, starting April 5th.
Tuesdays - April 5th - May 24th
Hours: 7:00-9:30 PM
@Wordspace 3191 Casitas, #156, Los Angeles, CA 90026
[Gorgeous Loft in Atwater Village] Free Parking!
Visit www.wordspace.net for info on the location.
Cost: $350 after March 21st, only $320 on or before March 21st
$15 materials fee payable at class.
About Erin Jourdan
Erin Jourdan received her undergraduate degree from the University of
Iowa in Communications and Anthropology. After working in the
publishing industry at St. Martin’s Press and The Hearst Corporation
she moved to San Francisco to attend graduate school. While in
California, Ms. Jourdan received an MA in English and an MFA in
Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. She has had work
in publications such as Hayden’s Ferry Review, Fourth River, Reed
Magazine, The Blue Earth Review, Rhino, San Francisco Magazine and
Copper Nickel among many others. She has worked in playwriting and
collaborated with three other writers to create Four Echoes, under the
auspices of the Shotgun Theatre’s Lab program and collaborated with
Manfred Fischbeck of GroupMotion on a retelling of the Orpheus and
Eurydice myth called, The Death of O. She has been a resident fellow
at the Vermont Studio Center, Djerassi and Jentel. Her website is at
erinjourdan.com, which has more information about her writing.
