Experimental Memoir. Cynthia Arrieu-King, Instructor

Registration opens on Wednesday, January 22, 2025.

 

IOWA SUMMER WRITING FESTIVAL

 

Spring 2025

 

Experimental Memoir (Weekend Workshop)

 

Cynthia Arrieu-King, Instructor

 

Dates/Time

 

Friday, May 16–Sunday, May 18, 2025

 

Introductory Meeting and Overview, Friday on Zoom:

 

• 7:00–8:00 pm Iowa/Central Time
• 8:00–9:00 pm Eastern Time
• 5:00–6:00 pm Pacific Time
• 6:00–7:00 pm Mountain Time
  
  

Workshop Meetings, Saturday & Sunday on Zoom:

 

• 11:00 am–4:00 pm Iowa/Central Time
• 12:00–5:00 pm Eastern Time
• 9:00 am–2:00 pm Pacific Time
• 10:00 am–3:00 am Mountain Time

 

Saturday and Sunday meetings include a one-hour break. Class meets for four hours each day.

 

Fee: $350

 

 

Course Description

 

Have you ever wanted your memoir to include dreams, folklore, collaged vignettes, different voices, images, photographs, historical documents, and research … together in concert? Discover how to piece together an experimental memoir in this intensive weekend workshop.

 

On Friday night, we will get acquainted and share memoir pieces with the group to be workshopped later in the weekend. On Saturday, we will build our experimentation muscles through writing exercises and games, and by reading published pieces that reimagine memoir. Authors we’ll dip into include Raymond Queneau, William Carlos Williams, Bhanu Kapil, Jos Charles, Brandon Shimoda, and Theresa Hak Kyung Cha. Then, on Sunday, we will workshop the memoir pieces shared with the group on Friday with an eye towards what we have learned.

 

Expect to deepen your understanding of how style is built via grammar, experience a spectrum of experimental styles, and think about the main ingredients of memoir as narrative. Each writer will come away with two to three new flash memoir pieces and a plan for a second draft of their workshopped memoir pieces.  

 

Instructor

 

Cynthia Arrieu-King is a professor of creative writing at Stockton University. She is the author of the experimental memoir The Betweens (Noemi Press, 2021). Her books of poetry include People are Tiny in Paintings of China (Octopus Books, 2010); Manifest, winner of the Gatewood Prize selected by Harryette Mullen (Switchback Books, 2013); as well as Futureless Languages (Radiator Press, 2018) and its companion, Continuity (Octopus Books, 2021). She also hosts the podcast The Last Word and is co-director of Murphy Writing. Her poems have appeared in American Poetry Review, TriQuarterly, Crazyhorse, and the tiny, among other journals. She lives in Louisville and Philadelphia. 

 

Registration & Fees

 

The fee for this course is $350. 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, please let us know as soon as possible. We can only offer full refunds if you cancel one week 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 registration fees once the class has begun.

 

Terms & Community Policy

 

1.  The Iowa Summer Writing Festival is a program for adults. You must be at least 18 years old to enroll in Festival workshops.

 

2.  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 small staff is out and about. If you phone and we miss you, please leave a detailed message!