Almost everyone has a life story to share, and memoir is an increasingly popular genre. What’s the secret to writing a successful memoir? How do you transform your life story into something publishable? In Laura Fraser's writing workshop you will focus on taking the “me” out of “memoir” and learning to write a story with universal appeal.
Laura Fraser is the author, most recently, of An Italian Affair, a travel memoir, which was a New York Times bestseller and translated into five languages. She is a contributing editor to MoreGourmet, O the Oprah Magazine, the New York Times, Marie Claire, Mother Jones, Salon.com, Self, Town & Country Travel, Vogue, and many other national magazines. Her articles have been collected in numerous anthologies, including Mexico: A Love Story, Best Food Writing 2004, Italy: A Love Story, The Honeymoon is Over, Roar Softly and Carry a Great Lipstick, Best Women’s Travel Writing 2005, and The Kindness of Strangers. Her first book, an expose of the diet industry called Losing It, landed her on the Today Show, Good Morning America, MTV, CNN, and NBC Nightly News, and the cover story in Newsweek. She has taught writing at the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, Aspen Summer Words, and other venues. She is a long-time member of the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto, a literary collective. She first came to San Miguel de Allende for a summer when she was eleven years old, which began a lifelong passion for travel, languages, and tortilla soup. magazine, and writes for
In this class you will discover:
--Narrative techniques to make your story come alive
--Examples of great memoirs and why they work
--The crucial difference between autobiography and memoir
--Researching your own life
--The boundaries of writing about friends, loved ones, and personal issues
--How to structure a memoir
--The process of writing a memoir, finding an agent, and writing a book proposal.