Writing from Memory and Imagination

This is a generative-only workshop based on the Amherst Artists & Writers method. Each week, we will write to evocative prompts – exercises. You may write in any genre. You’ll read your work aloud when you feel comfortable, then respond to each other’s work as mindful listeners, leaving all negative criticism behind.

What was strong in the work, I will ask you. What stayed with you? What made you care? sigh? laugh? Using the AWA method, we will create a safe and supportive environment where you will not only feel comfortable writing freely, but also learn how to listen for specific elements of craft in each other’s work.

We carry a multitude of stories inside us, whether they live in our banks of memory, imagination, or both. We’ve been telling stories since we first hopped off the bus and reported to our mothers what happened at school that day or protested, honest-to-god, we weren’t the ones who ate all of Auntie Jean’s oatmeal-chocolate-chunk cookies. Storytelling is natural. So is writing. Sometimes we forget that. In this workshop, we will remember. We’ll remember the voices we first heard telling stories around the kitchen table and down at the corner store. We’ll remember the voices we first used in our own writing, before anyone ever critiqued or graded us. And we’ll learn to trust those voices.

When we write together in the moment like this – too quickly to let critical inner voices pipe up – vivid, fresh stories bubble up from our memory and imagination in delightful and surprising ways. Each session, you will leave with rich, new material all your own and a renewed desire to write.

Writers of all levels are warmly welcomed.

LIMITED ENROLLMENT

WHERE:

3 Sylvan Road South, Westport

TIME:

8 Tuesdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.

DATE:

April 2, 9, 23, 30, May 7, 14, 21, 28

PRICE:

$475