THOMAS LARSON

Thomas Larson, renowned writer and memoir facilitator, is available for daylong, weekend, and weeklong workshops. He has taught beginning to advanced classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, MN, Ghost Ranch in Santa Fe and Abiquiu, NM, and Ashland University's Low-Residency MFA program, among dozens of venues. He works one-on-one with participants, often reading and editing manuscripts. The announcement below describes his basic workshop and can be used for advertising or promotion.

Join Thomas Larson, author of The Memoir and the Memoirist: Reading and Writing Personal Narrative, for a workshop in memoir writing. We begin by discussing the significant differences between traditional autobiography and contemporary memoir. Next we explore memoir’s demanding questions: Where do I begin? What is my focus? How do I discover the emotional truth of my story? How do I write about the living? With numerous writing prompts, we look at the mainstays of the memoir form: truth-telling and self-disclosure; sudden versus long-ago memoir; good and bad therapeutic writing; and the importance of metaphor and myth in the personal life.

An extended workshop (weekend or weeklong) begins with the following description.

Many of us have lived fascinating lives whether inwardly or outwardly, during childhood long ago or as adults in the last decade. But when it comes to writing a memoir, where do we begin? The day of our birth? The day we left home? The beginning or end of a relationship? Memoir is most successful when it is not the “story of a life,” but a focused part of that life—a dozen summers spent working on a grandfather’s farm; a long relationship with a dying relative; the first year of law school.