Workshop ANNOUNCEMENT
Memoir / Autofiction: A Workshop & Salon
with Adele Bertei
In this 4-session writing workshop, we will discover the voice we feel comfortable with while telling personal stories. In writing about our lived experiences, it is often daunting to imagine speaking the truths of how others have impacted our lives — be they family members, lovers, partners, work associates — for fear of how the telling might affect the people involved. And yet, it is precisely these relationships which shape our most profound trajectories throughout our processes of becoming. Overcoming fear is the first obstacle to clear in the making of captivating, intimate work.
Autofiction is not a genre. It is a safe novelistic style to tell one's true story by creating characters as proxy for us (narrator) and the people we're writing about. When asked why he had blended the genres of memoir and fiction for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (spoken of as a work of autofiction), Ocean Vuong said, “For me, as a poet, I was always beginning with truth.”
As we begin the journey of writing our true stories, I'll be sending out an initial email to attendees with passages from Federico Garcia Lorca's theory about the 'duende' as being the most profound entryway into art of any genre. For inspiration in finding our own distinctive, poetic voices, I will also include passages from bell hook's memoir, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life.
Description:
Every other week, we will meet for 2 hours. The first session will be a discussion of each individual's writing intention and what attendees would like to achieve. Preceding each of the following sessions, attendees will receive passages from several memoirs spanning different genres, depending on the attendee's intentions— humor, BIPOC, feminism, trauma, queer lives—for discussion as a salon of creatives. Before these three session, attendees will submit two pages, double-spaced, of original writing from a work they wish to embark on, or a work already in progress. There will be an email group, and everyone's pages will be sent to the group for critique and discussion five days previous to the in-person session.
Adele will provide written notes to each attendee on their submitted work. She will facilitate the sessions and speak to each submission, answering questions and leading the group discussion.
This in-person (or Zoom) workshop is limited to 8 attendees, and the cost for the 4-week session is $240.00. If in-person, tea, coffee, and beverages will be provided. If attendees wish to extend the workshop as a group for another 4 weeks to continue with guidance in their writing endeavors, they will have that option when the workshop concludes. If individuals wish to continue with their projects one-on-one with Adele, the option will also be available.
Submissions are open for the first workshop, to commence in the early afternoon of Saturday, May 11, 2024 for four sessions. Dates after initial are May 25th, June 8th, and June 22nd.
To submit: please send an email with a short bio, a note about your writing intentions, and a few paragraphs of writing to [email protected].
Instructor:
Adele Bertei's musical background informs her writing style and has led to the authoring of three books: Peter and the Wolves (a memoir), Why Labelle Matters (creative nonfiction) and Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood (a memoir). Her book about Sinead O'Connor, Universal Mother, will be released by Bloomsbury in 2025, and she is currently writing No New York, a memoir about downtown New York City in the late 1970s and '80s for Faber & Faber, London. Her books have been praised by writers and artists Mary Gaitskill, Jerry Stahl, Thurston Moore, Mary Harron, David Smith for The Guardian, Stephanie LaCava, Dorothy Allison, Greg Tate, Nikki Giovanni, Lucy Sante, Michelle Tea, Lenny Kravitz, and Barney Hoskins.
with Adele Bertei
In this 4-session writing workshop, we will discover the voice we feel comfortable with while telling personal stories. In writing about our lived experiences, it is often daunting to imagine speaking the truths of how others have impacted our lives — be they family members, lovers, partners, work associates — for fear of how the telling might affect the people involved. And yet, it is precisely these relationships which shape our most profound trajectories throughout our processes of becoming. Overcoming fear is the first obstacle to clear in the making of captivating, intimate work.
Autofiction is not a genre. It is a safe novelistic style to tell one's true story by creating characters as proxy for us (narrator) and the people we're writing about. When asked why he had blended the genres of memoir and fiction for On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (spoken of as a work of autofiction), Ocean Vuong said, “For me, as a poet, I was always beginning with truth.”
As we begin the journey of writing our true stories, I'll be sending out an initial email to attendees with passages from Federico Garcia Lorca's theory about the 'duende' as being the most profound entryway into art of any genre. For inspiration in finding our own distinctive, poetic voices, I will also include passages from bell hook's memoir, Wounds of Passion: A Writing Life.
Description:
Every other week, we will meet for 2 hours. The first session will be a discussion of each individual's writing intention and what attendees would like to achieve. Preceding each of the following sessions, attendees will receive passages from several memoirs spanning different genres, depending on the attendee's intentions— humor, BIPOC, feminism, trauma, queer lives—for discussion as a salon of creatives. Before these three session, attendees will submit two pages, double-spaced, of original writing from a work they wish to embark on, or a work already in progress. There will be an email group, and everyone's pages will be sent to the group for critique and discussion five days previous to the in-person session.
Adele will provide written notes to each attendee on their submitted work. She will facilitate the sessions and speak to each submission, answering questions and leading the group discussion.
This in-person (or Zoom) workshop is limited to 8 attendees, and the cost for the 4-week session is $240.00. If in-person, tea, coffee, and beverages will be provided. If attendees wish to extend the workshop as a group for another 4 weeks to continue with guidance in their writing endeavors, they will have that option when the workshop concludes. If individuals wish to continue with their projects one-on-one with Adele, the option will also be available.
Submissions are open for the first workshop, to commence in the early afternoon of Saturday, May 11, 2024 for four sessions. Dates after initial are May 25th, June 8th, and June 22nd.
To submit: please send an email with a short bio, a note about your writing intentions, and a few paragraphs of writing to [email protected].
Instructor:
Adele Bertei's musical background informs her writing style and has led to the authoring of three books: Peter and the Wolves (a memoir), Why Labelle Matters (creative nonfiction) and Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood (a memoir). Her book about Sinead O'Connor, Universal Mother, will be released by Bloomsbury in 2025, and she is currently writing No New York, a memoir about downtown New York City in the late 1970s and '80s for Faber & Faber, London. Her books have been praised by writers and artists Mary Gaitskill, Jerry Stahl, Thurston Moore, Mary Harron, David Smith for The Guardian, Stephanie LaCava, Dorothy Allison, Greg Tate, Nikki Giovanni, Lucy Sante, Michelle Tea, Lenny Kravitz, and Barney Hoskins.
The paperback version of Adele's memoir
Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood
will be released in May 2024 by ZE Books.
Twist: Tales of a Queer Girlhood
will be released in May 2024 by ZE Books.
