WFU Lifelong Learning Series: From Memory Lane to Memoir: Strategies for Writing Personal Stories

From Memory Lane to Memoir: Strategies for Writing Personal Stories

Aimee Mepham

Thursdays 10 am – 12 noon, July 7 – August 11

Brookstown Campus

“Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”    -Flannery O’Connor from Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose

Every life holds many stories. Whether you are a world traveler or someone who has lived in the same town your whole life, you are bound to have compiled the details of many compelling narratives. That’s partly why the contemporary memoir has become such a popular phenomenon. A memoir covers an aspect of a life, whether it’s a short piece about a fishing trip with your grandfather or a book that presents a longer family history. Open to all skill levels, this writing workshop examines the place of memoir writing in the genre of nonfiction and will help writers develop specific skills to tell their personal or family stories with a crafted sensibility. Over the course’s six weeks, we will read short pieces of memoir writing and practice some of our own.

Aimee Mepham grew up in Dearborn, Michigan. She holds a BA in English from Albion College and an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University in St. Louis. She has taught creative writing workshops at Indiana University, Washington University in St. Louis, Salem College, and Wake Forest University. Her work has appeared in Meridian, River Styx, Pinball, and Opium Magazine and has been performed twice by Liars’ League NYC. She is currently the Program Coordinator for the Humanities Institute at Wake Forest University.