The Course

The Role of Place in Memoir

In this class, we will breathe life into Susan Sontag’s incantation: love words, agonize over sentences, and pay attention to the world as being foundational to the role of place in memoir and essay, and how our relationship with and to it directly touches the experiences and narratives we create as a reflection of the world around us everywhere from nature to the table. Writers will spend time generating narratives at the intersection of the external and the internal, and how they directly influence each other. We will read short pieces by writers including Kerri Ni Dochartaigh, Ross Gay, Margaret Renkl, Barry Lopez, Robin Wall Kimmerer, and others. The course will primarily be generative.

Duration: This class meets over eight consecutive Tuesdays from 6-8 pm ET (3-5 pm PT) from October 17 through December 5. 

Application window: Applications will open September 1-15.

The Instructor

Elissa Altman is the James Beard Award-winning author of the memoirs Motherland, Treyf, Poor Man’s Feast, and her upcoming hybrid memoir about living a creative life, On Permission. A finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut Book Award, and Maine Literary Award for memoir, Altman’s work has appeared widely, including in Orion, On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine, LitHub, the Wall Street Journal, Dame, Lion’s Roar, and the Washington Post, where her column, Feeding My Mother, ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of sustenance, nature, and the creative spirit, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at the Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, College of William and Mary, and internationally.