Memoir Workshop: From Brainstorming to Final Edits with Ada Calhoun

4-Day Workshop
Wednesday – Saturday, May 9 – 12 | 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

In this four-day workshop, author Ada Calhoun will lead discussions on each stage of the memoir process: writing, research, rewriting, and submitting work for publication. Class members will read and discuss one another’s drafts, as well as inspiring examples of the form. The focus of this workshop will be on finding your own unique way to interweave the personal and the universal. Conversation topics will include: Where do you get ideas? How do you write scenes? Who are your story’s characters? What’s the arc of your narrative and the best structure for your project? What is the editorial process like? And how can you find an audience for your writing? We will also talk frankly about the benefits and pitfalls of writing about ourselves and the people close to us.

Ada Calhoun has been a journalist since 1998. She has also written personal essays for O, Real Simple, Redbook, Glamour, as well as three Modern Love columns and four New York Times Magazine Lives columns. As an author, she has published two books with W.W. Norton & Company — the New York history St. Marks Is Dead (2015) and the memoir Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give (2017).