(January 2025) 5-Week ONLINE Course: Memoir: Writing Your Story

Through five, two-hour Zoom sessions, novelist and memoirist Alison Jean Lester will engage you in the creative process of honing the essence of your memoir, choosing what belongs in it, and trying out structural options.

This course will focus on:

• Why you have chosen memoir for this story, and how this can guide your writing

• How what you want to write and what readers want to read may differ, and whether this matters

• Whether everything you imagine including truly enhances the experience

• What narrative structure would suit your goals best

• How to develop your narrative voice

Course Details:

5 live and interactive online sessions: Wednesday 22nd & 29th January 2025 and 5th, 12th & 19th February 2025, 19:00 – 21:00 GMT

A Zoom link will be in your ticket confirmation email

Course Highlights/Benefits:

• Live Zoom Sessions: Enjoy weekly interactive Zoom sessions where you'll be put through the paces of identifying the best way to go about your memoir, with ample opportunity for in-depth investigation and discussion.

• Dedicated Writing Time: Know that there will be time in your busy life set aside not only for considering how to go about your memoir, but also to get writing.

· Expert Feedback: Benefit from personalised feedback and guidance from an accomplished memoirist.

• Writing Community: Connect with a community of like-minded writers during the live session. Share your progress, exchange ideas, and receive constructive feedback in a supportive online environment.

Who is this course suitable for?

• Writers wondering if memoir is the right genre for their story

• Writers sure about memoir, but not sure about their approach

Whether you are sure about your memoir and just want to be kick-started into writing, or you are only just beginning to think about it, this course will get the engine of your writing process going.

Tutor bio: Alison Jean Lester is the author of the memoir Absolutely Delicious: A Chronicle of Extraordinary Dying (2020), a finalist in the Indie Excellence Book Awards. Her first published book of fiction was a short-story collection, Locked Out: Stories Far from Home (Monsoon Books, 2007). In 2010, when working as a corporate coach, she self-published an essay collection, Restroom Reflections: How Communication Changes Everything. In 2015, Putnam Books in the US and John Murray Books in the UK published her debut novel, Lillian on Life, which was also translated into French, Italian and German. In 2017, John Murray published her second novel, Yuki Means Happiness. During the pandemic years, she returned to self-publishing and set up the indie Bench Press Books with her photographer husband, Andrew Gurnett. As well as her memoir, Bench Press have published her novels Glide (2021) and The Sound of It (2022), and her late father’s memoir of adventures in the Himalayas, Return to the Scene of the Climb (2023), which Alison edited and appended.

www.alisonjeanlester.com

www.benchpressbooks.com

Live and interactive online sessions via Zoom:

The sessions will take place online via Zoom Online Meeting software. It is free to download and you will only need the free version to attend. Please download it and check it is working before your course/workshop starts.

Please try and be somewhere you can concentrate and won’t be interrupted. Headphones can be useful if you have some, to cut out other noise.

Bursary Scheme:

We understand that not all writers are able to pay for their writing courses to further their career, and we run a Bursary Scheme as a consequence. Our bursary policy can be read here, if you would like to apply for a bursary, please contact us: [email protected].

Please note: you must sign up for the full course even if you cannot attend all dates. No partial course ticket is available.

Short Courses are for over 18s. If you are a young writer, you can sign up for our Spark Young Writers Programme.

All Writing West Midlands short courses are collaborative, and you will learn as much from your fellow course attendees as from the tutor. You will be expected to play an active role in group tasks, and you will also have time to reflect on your own writing during sessions.

Course handouts are sometimes (but not always) available, and notes may be available in advance upon request. If you have any additional needs, please contact Writing West Midlands in advance of the course starting and we will try to assist you.

Host or Publisher Writing West Midlands