Writing Workshop | Truth or Fiction?: Writing Life Stories | Susan Meyers

Writing about real life can be tricky. You may not remember all the details — or, you may want to change information to protect people or make a story more interesting. But how much is ok to change? This workshop explores memoir and autobiography to examine how “true” your life stories should be. We’ll consult writers like Patricia Hampl, David Sedaris, Tim O’Brien, and Maxine Hong Kingston; and we’ll use writing exercises to invigorate your own personal writing project. You’ll leave with a deeper appreciation for the questions that memoirists face, as well as a growing sense of your own responses to them.

SUSAN V. MEYERS is an internationally acclaimed author, having offered keynote addresses at conferences and workshops in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. She holds an MFA from the University of Minnesota and a PhD from the University of Arizona and now directs the Creative Writing Program at Seattle University. Her fiction and nonfiction have been supported by numerous national awards, including fellowships from Squaw Valley, Hedgebrook, Jentel, Hambidge, and the Millay Colony of the Arts. Meyers’ novel, Failing the Trapeze, won the Nilsen Award for a First Novel and the Fiction Attic Press Award for a First Novel, and it was a finalist for the New American Fiction Award; and her field study on education in rural Mexico, Del Otro Lado: Literacy and Migration Across the U.S.-Mexico Border, was supported by a Fulbright Fellowship and grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Association of University Women. Other work has recently appeared in Creative Nonfiction, The Rumpus, Calyx, Per Contra, Dogwood, and The Minnesota Review, and it has thrice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.