Throughout the course, writer, editor, and teacher Sari Botton will share generative writing prompts and exercises strategically designed to jog the brain and get participants writing. There will be much free-writing, and sharing of writing aloud. Botton will offer her feedback, then invite participants to share theirs, in a supportive way, which she will guide them toward. Writers will come away with several short pieces, which can later be developed individually, or together into one piece.

As an editor, teacher, and bestselling former ghostwriter of memoirs, she’s learned how to gently coax important, compelling stories out of people. She believes everyone has the ability to write, and stories to tell. Often they just need the assurance of a skilled guide like Sari. 

She has strategies for overcoming fear and resistance so that workshop participants can transition into a productive creative zone. She also has strategies for dealing with the boondoggle that is writing about other people in your life—a subject she’s been researching and writing about for decades. She'll help you get your story out of your head onto the page, and to develop it into a compelling narrative that others will find relatable and moving.

Sari Botton's memoir in essays, And You May Find Yourself...Confessions of a Late-Blooming Gen-X Weirdo, was chosen by Poets & Writers magazine for the 2022 edition of its annual "5 Over 50" feature. An essay from it received notable mention in The Best American Essays 2023, edited by Vivian Gornick. 

For five years, she was the Essays Editor at Longreads. She edited the bestselling anthologies Goodbye to All That: Writers on Loving and Leaving New York and Never Can Say Goodbye: Writers on Their Unshakable Love for New York. She now publishes Oldster Magazine, Memoir Land, and Adventures in Journalism. 

She was the Writer in Residence in the creative writing department at SUNY New Paltz for Spring, 2023.

Website: saribotton.com  Oldster: oldster.substack.com

Memoirland: memoirland.substack.com

Adventures in Journalism: adventuresinjournalism.substack.com