Writing the Memoir: Finding the Universals with Meredith Maran September 18, 2010

What makes your own life story worth telling? In a word: universality. The hard part is figuring out how to identify, express, and enlarge the connections between your experiences and emotions and those of your readers. This is what publishing professionals call, "Reaching out to universals." Through teacher presentation, group discussion, and in-class exercises, Writing the Memoir will teach students at all levels - those who are presently working on a memoir and those who want to be - to turn the sows' ears of everyday life into the silk purse of a memoir worth writing.

Meredith Maran is an award-winning journalist and the author of several bestselling nonfiction books, including Dirty, Class Dismissed, Notes from an Incomplete Revolution, and What It's Like to Live Now. Her work appears regularly in anthologies, newspapers, and magazines. Her newest book, My Lie: A True Story of False Memory, is being published by Wiley in September 2010.

Official Website: http://www.ciis.edu/News_and_Events/Event_Calendar/Maran_Writing_the_Memoir.html