Memoir/Nonfiction Workshop Information + Registration
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Writing Toward Truth
A Memoir/Nonfiction Workshop
Truth is amorphous. It takes the shape of the facts that contain it. The things we hold as truth, whether it be a family history, a childhood experience, or the narratives that hold up our society—all of these things may be radically altered, even entirely reconfigured, when the facts as we understand them change or shift.
This workshop will focus on writing with a curiosity for the container and the possibility of remaking it. We’ll focus on the tools of literary journalism and how they can be applied in all creative nonfiction. These include finding your focus, observation and research, meaningful details, pacing and momentum. Plus, what it means to embrace both accuracy and uncertainty.
Writers of all levels who are curious about which truths are self-evident and how we can be sure are welcome.
SUBMIT Participants are asked to submit a work of nonfiction (essay, memoir, reported story), up to 2500 words. Please note, by “work” here I mean words on a page. This could be fragments, an outline, a construct of an idea, an essay draft, or an excerpt from a manuscript in progress. We’ll start where you are. Email the manuscript no later than 9:00 a.m. on October 4 to director@mainewriters.org with the subject line: “NONFICTION MSS.”
Chelsea Conaboy is a writer and health and science journalist. She was part of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning team for coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing. She led the features reporting at the Portland Press Herald, where she edited weekly sections on arts and entertainment, books, food, and sustainable living. Her writing also has been published by The New York Times, Mother Jones, Politico, the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine, National Journal, The Week, ParentMap, and WBUR. Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood, published by Henry Holt & Co., is her first book. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Amy Ellis Nutt writes, “Part memoir, part scientific sleuthing, Mother Brain is storytelling at its very best. This book is deeply engrossing, not only because it untangles so many mysteries, but because it helps us reframe what we thought we already knew – about motherhood, about parenting, about ourselves. This book is a game-changer.” The book is set to published in 20 countries. Chelsea lives in South Portland with her husband, their two children, and her own changing parental brain.
Registration
To register, click the button below. To read more about the prices and the room & board options for the Harvest Writers Retreat, please go to the Room + Board page.