Finding Your Voice: Lessons in Crafting Your Memoir Workshop

Name: Finding Your Voice: Lessons in Crafting Your Memoir Workshop
Start: 2025-09-19T18:30:00-04:00
Location: 271 W Main St, Kutztown, PA, United States, Pennsylvania 19530

Schedule

Fri, 19 Sep, 2025 at 06:30 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

271 W Main St, Kutztown, PA, United States, Pennsylvania 19530 | Kutztown, PA

For anyone who’s ever dreamed of writing their life stories, and feeling proud of the art they’ve created, this course is for you. Kempton-based writer and educator Anderson Howat (M.F.A. Creative Writing, Emerson College) will lead a small group through eight weeks of memoir writing. The course’s primary objective is for participants to develop or refine their own place as writers within that genre.
Students will examine relevant excerpts from luminaries in the field, and receive specific, technical instruction about how and why those passages captivate readers. Through studying those voices, they will find – or continue to build confidence in -- their own voice.
Every week, Anderson will share a prompt designed to unlock those poignant life-moments, and students will write two to three pages in response. Everyone’s work will be workshopped twice.
Anyone who’s ever had a childhood can write a memoir. The only prerequisite is that you’ve lived a life and want to write about it.
Ages: 18-up
Class size: 6
Dates: Friday Evenings 9/19-11/14 (No Session on 10/31)
Time: 6:30 pm – 8 pm
Cost: $120.00
All proceeds benefit the Teen Banned Books Club's purchasing account. This account allows the Club to offer books for no cost to the group's participants.
About the Instructor/Facilitator:
During Andy Howat’s 30-year career as a professional writer, his work has appeared in national glossies, newspapers, academia, and extensively online. Andy graduated with an Honors in English from the University of Rochester and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. A firm believer in quality education, and having learned his craft from dedicated, accomplished writer-professors, Andy has sought to pay it forward by dedicating himself to sharing the craft of writing, as a high school English teacher and as a writing professor at four colleges. Among his professional distinctions, he’s been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and professor of the year. Currently, he leads a video and animation production studio at Penske Truck Leasing.