Making Meaning of Memory… Without Falling Down the Rabbit Hole!

Memories provide insight into our lives and help us to understand who we are (and how we got that way). They can offer meaningful triggers for writers in all genres, not just memoirists. Often, however, writing from memory can lead us down a dark rabbit hole of introspection. Take heart! As George Gershwin knew, “It ain’t necessarily so!”

This workshop will focus on our life experiences with rigor and honesty, but without falling down the dark hole of humorless self-absorption. We will emphasize the funny side of things as we remember and reflect upon the loony world in which we live.

What could be better in this time of angst? Come with ideas, memories, laptop or paper/pen, and a sense of the funny and absurd!

This workshop will meet via Zoom on Wednesdays, October 12, 19, 26, November 2, 9, 16.

Instructor:
Elayne Clift, a Vermont Humanities Council Scholar, is an award-winning writer and journalist, a writing workshop leader, and a lecturer. Her work has been widely anthologized and appears in numerous publications internationally. A regular columnist for the Keene Sentinel and the Brattleboro Commons, and a reviewer for the New York Journal of Books, she has written for various magazines and periodicals. Her novel, Hester’s Daughters, a contemporary, feminist retelling of The Scarlet Letter, appeared in 2012 and her award-winning short story collection, Children of the Chalet, was published by Braughler Books (2015).  Her latest book is Around the World in 50 Years: Travel Tales of a Not So Innocent Abroad (Braughler Books, 2019).