Pivotal Moments: A Personal Essay Writing Workshop

We are excited to offer a three-week intensive course in personal essay writing with author Jane Ganahl. Please note the sessions will take place from 4:00 to 6:00 PM on three consecutive Wednesdays: January 14, January 21, and January 28. The total cost for the three-week session is $300, and is limited to eight people.

About the Workshop

Every day there are moments that could inspire a personal essay: finding your late mother’s favorite shoes, being asked by your curious grandchild when you’re going to die, walking past a restaurant and smelling the pungent aroma of a birthplace you have not seen in decades. These are moments that cause you to pause, reflect and learn: the basis of a solid personal essay. In this three-part introductory class, you’ll learn how to identify these pivotal moments, find the lessons therein, and write about them in a way that resonates with readers. Because the best personal essays don’t just relate something that happened to you: they draw the reader in with deep sharing and offer a new perspective. The goal of this course is to write an essay—or at least get a solid first draft done—in three weeks!

Students will learn:

- How to choose a topic (and topics to avoid)

- The five elements of a good essay

- How to structure your essay with an outline

- The importance of perspective

About the Instructor

Jane Ganahl is a writer, teacher, and co-founder of the Litquake festival. As a Hearst newspaper journalist for many years, she wrote the “Single Minded” column for the Chronicle, which led to her memoir, Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife. She was also the editor of the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. Her essays have appeared in five different anthologies and in the magazines Spirituality & Health, , , Huffington Post, Bazaar, and Salon, among other places. She is also a crazy cat lady, with a small nonprofit that tends feral colonies on the San Mateo County coast. Read more at janeganahl.com.

The workshop will take place in a second floor office at 1047 El Camino Real which is directly across the road from Kepler’s Books. Please note that there is no elevator in the building.

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