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Meet THe Team
Who are we to tell our story? Must we ask permission to tell the truth? We are the story-telling species, and the human compulsion to create narrative art from experience makes us who we are. But the writing of memoir often begins with daunting questions of permission and truth-telling, which together can keep the memoirist from moving into a place where voice and story are free to emerge. In this generative workshop, we will explore the creation of an engaging personal narrative and focus on bigger craft issues, enabling the memoirist to move beyond the constraints of fear to a place of clarity. Please come with a willingness to unravel process and permission, and an acknowledgment that the impulse to tell one’s story must be honored.
• In-Class Writing Lift: Medium
• Homework: None
• Workshopping Drafts: Optional
Elissa Altman's latest book is Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create (Godine Books), an examination of the role that permission and story ownership play in the creative process. She is the award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, and Poor Man's Feast, and the bestselling essay substack of the same name. She has been a winner of the James Beard Award for narrative food writing, a finalist for the Pushcart Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut BookAward, Maine Literary Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and her work has appeared in publications including Orion, The Bitter Southerner, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, the Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and the Washington Post, where her column, "Feeding My Mother," ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission, storytelling, and creativity, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers' Publishers Alliance, Kripalu, TruroCenter for the Arts, Rutgers Community Writing Workshop, and beyond, and lives in New England with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.
Elissa is new to The Porch. Welcome!
