IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL

The Literary Memoir with Amy Butcher (Five-Week Workshop)

Dates/Time

Saturdays on Zoom, July 31–August 28, 2021

11:00 a.m.–2:00 p.m. Iowa/Central Time (12:00–3:00 p.m. Eastern; 9:00 a.m.–12:00 noon Pacific; 10:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m. Mountain)

Fee: $600

Course Description

Once upon a time, long before the Age of Oprah, writers who had lived through something fascinating or terrible or both would turn their experiences into fiction; nowadays, however, these stories equally take the form of creatively rendered memoirs—ruminative, retrospective narratives that comprise a sub-genre of the diverse and expansive genre we typically call creative nonfiction. What does this mean? It means, for one, that the artful rendering of personal narratives is increasingly considered valuable and, as luck would have it, marketable in the literary world. But what makes a memoir literary, how do these works best function, and how are they differentiated from autobiography, anecdotal prose, or simple recollection? Perhaps more importantly, considering the flood of memoir manuscripts on the market—the Neilson Bookscan reports a 400% increase published between 2004 and today—how can we elevate our own personal narratives into artful, meaningful work worthy of readership?

In this class, we’ll study excerpts from some of the most successful and surprising literary memoirs on the market, discuss the elements that comprise a memorable literary memoir, and work to engage and understand the idea that memoir is less interested in the past than the act of remembering and identifying the many ways past selves continue to inform who we are in the present. Students will develop ideas, a conceptual framework, and key excerpts for their own memoir through in-class and take-home exercises. You’ll leave, in other words, with all you need to tell, and sell, your story.

This workshop is for writers of all backgrounds who feel they have a story to tell and are looking to develop new material while simultaneously exploring new ways to conceptualize and market a larger manuscript. Focus will be on generating entirely new material.

Class Structure & Objectives:

Our class will meet weekly on Zoom. Each class will include a lesson with accompanying readings and discussion on one or more unique aspects of the literary memoir and several in-class and take-home exercises. Amy will also hold a 30-minute (Zoom or phone) conference with each writer to provide further supplemental reading suggestions and ideas concerning structure. By the end of the workshop, participants will have ample new material and a conceptual vision to continue shaping and completing their book-length manuscript.

Instructor

Amy Butcher is an award-winning essayist and the author of Mothertrucker (Little A/Topple Books, 2022), which in July 2019 was acquired by Makeready Films for film development with  Emmy-winner Jill Soloway directing and Academy Award and Golden Globe-winner Julianne Moore in a starring role. Her first book, Visiting Hours (Blue Rider Press/Penguin-Random House, 2015), earned starred reviews and praise from The New York Times Sunday Review of Books, NPR, The Star Tribune, Kirkus Reviews, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and others. Her work has been featured on National Public Radio and the BBC, anthologized in Best Travel Writing 2016, and awarded grand prize in the 2016 Solas Awards' "Best of Travel Writing" series and the 2014 Iowa Review Award judged by David Shields. Additional essays have also been awarded notable distinctions in the 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 editions of the Best American Essays series and have appeared in Granta, Harper's, The New York Times "Modern Love," The New York Times Sunday Review, The Washington Post, The Denver Post, The Iowa Review, Lit Hub, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Fourth Genre, The Rumpus, The Paris Review online, Tin House online, and Brevity, among others.  She earned her MFA from the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. Amy is the Director of Creative Writing and an Associate Professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan University. She lives in Ohio with her three rescue dogs, beautiful beasts.

Registration & Fees

The fee for this course is $600. Payment in full is required to register.

Registrations are accepted on a first-come, first-served basis.

Class size is limited to 12.

Note: Your credit card payment will be processed by an external provider and will appear on your credit card statement as “UI Writing—Magid Center.”

Refund & Cancellation Policy

If you need to cancel your enrollment in a Festival class, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel two weeks prior to the start of class. After that, before the start date of class, we can offer a 50% refund. We cannot refund day-of cancellations, and we cannot refund or partially refund tuition once the class has begun.

Terms & Community Policy

The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a community built on an assumption of shared enterprise, in the spirit of mutual respect. We reserve the right to a) revoke the registration of or b) dismiss from the program any person who disrupts the learning/working environment of others. Participants in the Festival are subject to all University of Iowa policies governing conduct in our community, whether online or in person.

Questions?

Contact the Iowa Summer Writing Festival: iswfestival@uiowa.edu. Phone: (319) 335-4160.

Our tiny staff is working remotely. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a message!