We all have amazing stories to tell!

Writing a memoir can be a great way to record your experiences and leave a legacy behind for your family. With our busy lives, however, it can be daunting to plot an entire book of memoirs. This course will provide you with exciting new ideas, examples, and strategies for writing memoirs in short (less than 1,000-word) pieces, guiding you through the process of sharing your memories.

Reading:
"Memoir" - Amy Hempel
"On Miniatures" - Lia Purpura
"What I Took" - Heather Sellers
"Anniversary Disease" - Diane Seuss
"The Soils I Have Eaten" - Aimee Nezhukumatathil
"Invisible Partners" - Ira Sukrungruang

Take Aways: 90-minute class outline:
-Some brief lecturing on the origins of the memoir as a genre, why we write memoirs, and the unique capabilities of memoirs in miniature form
-Some discussion of miniature forms (and how we already encounter/use them in our day-to-day lives)
-Four examples of miniature memoirs and the unique strategies they exemplify
-A writing exercise -
Time to share/discuss your writing process
-A Q&A

About Meghan

Meghan Lamb is the author of Mirror Translation (Blamage Books, 2025), COWARD (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), Failure to Thrive (Apocalypse Party, 2021), All of Your Most Private Places (Spork Press, 2020), and Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace, 2017). Her work has also appeared in Quarterly West, DIAGRAM, Redivider, and Passages North, among other publications. She currently teaches creative writing through the University of Chicago, Story Studio, and GrubStreet. She is an editor for the magazine Always Crashing and curator of the Always Crashing Reading and Performance Series.