WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION

What does it mean to write memoir at this particular point in time? How do we write out of our own personal urgency while also asking questions about community, care, survival, and power, given all that is wrong with the world and all we’d like to make better? How does it feel to be alive right now? We’ll think about those questions alongside all the elements of craft: voice, structure, aboutness, sonics, description, polarity, openings, and closings.

This is a critique-based workshop in which you will be required to read and critique your classmates’ work before we meet as a group. We’ll workshop three manuscripts a day, in addition to leaving time for discussion of a few brief examples of published work, which we’ll use as the basis for in-class prompts. Along the way, we’ll work hard, look after each other, and make sure that play and seriousness share the same space.

You will be asked to submit a draft of a chapter, excerpt, or fully contained piece of five to ten double-spaced pages (2,500 words max) in advance of the workshop.

REQUIREMENTS

• This is an all-levels workshop.
• Please submit a cover letter that states your interest in this workshop and gives an overview of your prior workshop experience, if any.
• The cost is $675. If you are selected to participate in the workshop, a deposit of $300 is required to register, with the balance due by September 30.
• If you are accepted, you have the option of attending the Keynote on Thursday, January 11, at a reduced price of $150 (we will send you a link upon confirmation). Alternately, you may purchase a ticket to attend the Seminar in full, as it runs after the workshops (January 11 – 14).
• Financial Assistance is available to those who would not otherwise be able to attend—click here for guidelines and/or to apply for a Workshop Fellowship Award. (Do not submit a regular application if you are requesting financial aid.)
• Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until the class is full.

ABOUT

Paul Lisicky is the author of the memoir The Sky in It: A Life with Joni Mitchell, forthcoming from HarperOne, as well as the acclaimed memoirs, Later: My Life at the Edge of the World (one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020); The Narrow Door (a New York Times Editors’ Choice and a Finalist for the Randy Shilts Award); and Famous Builder (Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award). In addition, he has published Unbuilt Projects, The Burning House and Lawnboy (fiction). His work has appeared in The Atlantic, BuzzFeed, Conjunctions, The Cut, Fence, the New York Times, Ploughshares, Tin House, and in many other magazines and anthologies.

He has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he has served on the Writing Committee since 2000. He has taught in the creative writing programs at Cornell University, New York University, Sarah Lawrence College, The University of Texas at Austin and elsewhere.

Lisicky is currently the director of the MFA Program at Rutgers University-Camden, where he is a professor and editor of the journal StoryQuarterly. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.