Who this workshop is for: Essayists, memoirists, journal-keepers and anyone who wants to write about their lives and experiences but feels held back by the spectre of secret-keeping.

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. 

The act of crafting our stories into engaging memoir and creative non-fiction elevates them beyond the abstract. 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 workshop, we will explore the creation of engaging personal narrative and focus on bigger craft issues, enabling the new memoirist to move beyond the constraints of fear to a place of clarity. Together we’ll explore: 

• How to navigate the mine-field of story ownership and permission-to-write when crafting a narrative that involves others

• What is it, exactly, that makes personal narrative truly engaging? 

• How to know what is best kept between the covers of a journal versus crafted into narrative? 

• What are the elements of great memoir, and what distinguishes it from a recollection of an experience or an information dump?

Elissa Altman is the author of the acclaimed hybrid memoir Permission: The New Memoirist and the Courage to Create, an examination of the role that permission, story ownership, and fear play in the creative process; her forthcoming book, Where You Used to Be, an investigation of the marriage of creativity and grief, is coming in 2027. 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 is a winner of the James Beard Award, a finalist for the Pushcart Prize, Lambda Literary Award, Maine Literary Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize. Her work has appeared in publications including Orion, The Bitter Southerner, Print, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian. 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 Center for Fiction, Truro Center for the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, Kripalu, Esalen, and beyond, and lives in New England with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.

Website: MelissaAltman.com 

Substack: Poor Man’s Feast