The Art of Memoir
Please note: "The Art of Memoir" is fully enrolled. Please contact the office to be added to the waitlist.
With the memoir form, writers have the opportunity to bring the people, places and events of their lives into focus on the page. In a lively, supportive atmosphere, students in this course will find the critique and accountability necessary to the art of writing memoir. Assignments will include brief readings and prompts designed to spark the imagination and celebrate the individual voice. As a community of learners dedicated to the task of recording the past in meaningful ways, we will dive in to our stories, writing and listening to one another with intention. We will challenge one another to discover the powerful complexity of our own experiences and to share them in writing with courage and conviction.
Faculty Bio
Born in Anchorage, Alaska, Caroline Goodwin moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 1999 to attend Stanford as a Wallace Stegner Fellow in poetry. Her nonfiction piece "The Money Place" won the Under the Gum Tree creative nonfiction contest in 2020. She is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Matanuska (Aquifer Press in Wales, UK).
This is an In-Person Workshop
- Classes will meet in person at the Golden Bear Center, Suite 300, at 1995 University Ave., Berkeley
- Class is limited to 18 members
- You must be a current OLLI @Berkeley member to register. Learn about membership, including our fee assistance program.
Schedule Highlights
- Course starts on Monday, Sept. 16, and ends on Monday, Oct. 21
- Classes meet for 6 weeks, 2 hours per session (10–noon)
- All course materials will remain available to view and enjoy through Dec. 31
Member Praise for Carolyn Goodwin
Caroline's patience, warmth, positivity, repeating of course goals, prompts, encouragement, hints and techniques, repetition of hints and techniques, simplicity, in class writing time of 10 minutes, weekly assignments, willingness to review our submissions, some of the samples of written works ... it was simply a wonderful course.
Wonderful course. Inspiring examples and practical wisdom.