The Art of Memoir. With Rebecca Walker (USA)
Write Your Truth. Change the World.
5 day Workshop in English: May 26th to 31st, 2012
Bestselling author Rebecca Walker has lived it: she’s seen the way one voice, one book, one life told beautifully, can touch and transform people’s lives forever. She wants you to live it, too.
Join Rebecca in Vienna in May 2012 for an intensive five-day workshop designed to free up your creative voice, guide your memoir writing, and strategize its placement in the publishing industry in the USA and in Europe.
From the early 1990s, the radical individual voice of the memoirist has changed the social and literary landscapes in the US and around the world. This unique genre—different from traditional autobiography—gives a voice to anyone, at any juncture in their life, offering a way to transform the weight of the past into the freedom of the future. From Lucy Grealy's miraculous Autobiography of a Face and Susanna Kaysen's Girl Interrupted toHenry Louis Gates Jr.’s Colored People and Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis, memoir has taken center stage in the marketplace
Rebecca has worked with hundreds of writers at every stage of their writing process, from initial idea to jacket design. She’s also written an international bestseller,a critically acclaimed memoir, edited three groundbreaking anthologies, and addressed hundreds of audiences–from Harvard, Microsoft and JP Morgan Chase, to the Ministries of Culture in Estonia.
At the workshop, Rebecca shares everything she knows about craft and technique of memoir writing. You’ll learn about voice and structure. You’ll gain courage and faith, and join a group of like-minded souls on a journey. Rebecca will also contextualize this popular American genre and its possibilities for expansion in the European markets.
Place:
This workshop will be held at the beautiful “writers´studio” in the heart of Vienna, nearby Berggasse, where Sigmund Freud used to live. In minutes you can take a tram to the city center, sip coffee in beautiful Viennese cafes. Or visit down tempo clubs at on the hip Danube canal´s Summer Stage.
Schedule:
We spend our mornings discussing previously submitted work, or projects in their early stages. In the afternoon we focus on craft, taking apart the elements of memoir to show how a book is built: voice, memory, story, structure, and process–we look at it all. Our discussion of the rapidly shifting publishing industry is a constant.
Day one: Arrive and settle in. Meet the other participants at a welcome party.
Day two: Begin.
Day three: Keep going.
Day four:Take a break to integrate.
Day five: Dive in fresh.
Day six: Go deeper.
Day seven: Come up for air. Clarify. Prepare to re-enter the world.
Day eight: Fly home.
Language of Presentation:
English only
Focus group:
The Art of Memoir is for writers interested in developing work based on personal stories, memoir, and creative nonfiction; your project may be at any stage, whether just an idea or a completed manuscript. You will also be able to select a few choice memoirs to read before the workshop begins. In April 2012 you will be asked to send in a few pages for Rebecca and the other participants to read. Expect to generate new material of your own over the course of the workshop.
Costs:
Early registration – through March 15th, 2012 - cost of the workshop is Euro 1199,- (including taxes), this includes a welcome party on the evening before workshop starts, reading materials, coffee/tea & biscuits throughout the workshop.
Accomodations & food is not included. We can send you a list of nice hotels & hostels nearby the writers´studio.
After early registration, the cost goes up Euro to 1499,-.
End of registration is April 15th, 2012.
Registration:
Please register here. We will send you per e-mail an invoice for a non-refundable down payment of Euro 499,- to transfer money to our account. You can also pay via Paypal if you wish. The second installment will be due in May 2012.
What other people say about the workshop:
“I came to Maui feeling unsure about my commitment to my project and insecure about sharing my work with a group of strangers. Rebecca created an extraordinarily supportive and safe atmosphere to share and discuss work, which opened the group to engaging and intensely challenging critique. Her patient and generous guidance gave me a new sense of confidence in my voice, helped me to find a structure for my work, and inspired a strong commitment to bring my project to completion.” –Heather Sparks
“As an American expatriate living in the Netherlands, Rebecca Walker’s workshop gave me the tools to grow and to thrive as a creative spirit. Rebecca’s techniques gave me the foundation to structure my memoir in an effective manner. The workshop continues to influence me, guiding me as I work towards the next level of writing my memoir.”–Pamela Armstrong de Vreeze