One of the reasons people read memoir is to enter and experience a different world. As you write, it’s your job to create that world, making sure to include both your internal space—your emotional state when the story takes place—and the world that is the backdrop to your story, including geography, climate, interiors, and historical context. Setting is the wallpaper of your story: It should neatly fit into the larger work, enhancing the narrative themes and characters, but not be so dominant that it overwhelms the people in the room.
In this seminar we will look at the many ways we can develop the external worlds of our personal stories. We will read examples of the role of setting in successful memoir and essays and do in-class writing to help the worlds of our memoirs come to life. You will leave this seminar with new writing and a new perspective on existing work.
Alysia Abbott is the author of Fairyland, A Memoir of My Father, which was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and an ALA Stonewall Award winner and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards. She grew up in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury, the only child of gay p... Read More →
