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Say What Now?

A Workshop on Dialogue in Memoir

Unless you’ve carried around a recording device your whole life, remembering important conversations word-for-word and transcribing them onto the page is essentially impossible to do when writing memoir. How, then, do memoirists craft immersive scenes for readers that factually represent their experiences if they can’t remember exactly what people said?

In this workshop, participants will explore how memoir writers reconstruct dialogue in order to capture the spirit of conversations by drawing on their recollections of a specific time and place, character traits like mannerisms and speech patterns, and character motives and relationships. Attendees will examine examples of dialogue in memoir and engage in writing prompts and exercises to help them learn to recreate dialogue that reflects realistic talk and works effectively to create tension and movement in the narrative.

In addition, each participant will also have the opportunity to share a scene that includes dialogue from a memoir-in-progress or narrative essay and receive constructive feedback from the class.

+ SUBMIT After registering, participants are asked to submit an excerpt from a memoir-in-progress or narrative essay of up to 1000 words by no later than 9:00 a.m. on Thursday, March 12. Please take the deadline and word limit seriously as MWPA likely cannot accept late submissions and excess words will be cut. Please note that these manuscripts will be distributed in advance via email to the other workshop participants. Please email the manuscript to perry@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “BROOKS WORKSHOP MSS.” Please use standard formatting (1” margins, double-spaced, 12 pt Times New Roman) and submit Word docs (ideally) or PDFs only.


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Melanie Brooks is the author of Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma (February 2017, Beacon Press). She teaches at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, Merrimack College in Andover, Massachusetts, and Nashua Community College in New Hampshire. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, Bustle, The Manifest-Station, Hippocampus, the Huffington Post, Modern Loss, Solstice Literary Magazine, the Recollectors, the Stonecoast Review and Word Riot. She received the Michael Steinberg Prize for Creative Nonfiction in Solstice Literary Magazine’s annual contest. Melanie received her master of fine arts in creative nonfiction from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast MFA program. Her almost-completed memoir explores the lasting impact of living with the ten-year secret of her father’s HIV disease before his death in 1995. Her writing is the vehicle through which she’s learning to understand that impact. Melanie lives in Nashua, New Hampshire with her husband, two children, and yellow Lab.


ADVANCE REGISTRATION REQUIRED
All MWPA workshops require advanced registration. We accept registration by phone, mail, and online via PayPal. We cannot guarantee registration in the final 24-hours before a workshop, and can rarely accommodate day-of registration.

PAYMENT & CANCELLATION POLICIES
If you need to withdraw from a class after registering for any reason, please email or call the MWPA immediately. You may be eligible for a partial refund or credit, depending on how far in advance you cancel.

QUESTIONS
For any questions regarding this workshop, please contact Hannah Perry at perry@mainewriters.org.

REGISTER BY PHONE
Call 207-228-8263 and register with your VISA or MasterCard.

REGISTER BY MAIL
If you prefer to pay by mail, please print this registration form (downloadable PDF) and mail it to the MWPA with a check or credit card information.

Earlier Event: March 18
Gather 32
Later Event: March 28
Small Wonders