The Unreliable Archive: Memory, Evidence, and the Stories We Tell — 8-Week Online Multigenre Workshop with Hillary Leftwich Starts Thursday, April 1st, 2027
The Unreliable Archive Writing Workshop | April 2027 Online
The Unreliable Archive Writing Workshop: Memory, Evidence, and the Stories We Tell with Hillary Leftwich
Begins Thursday, April 1, 2027
This is an 8-week asynchronous online writing workshop via Wet Ink, with new lessons and assignments each week.
Now Enrolling!
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Instructor Hillary Leftwich is a multimedia writer, educator, former criminal defense investigator, and the author of Ghosts Are Just Strangers Who Know How to Knock (Agape Editions, 2023), Aura (Future Tense Books, 2022), and Saint Dymphna’s Playbook (Limit Zero, 2025). She teaches creative writing, business writing, and environmental writing and storytelling at several universities, writing organizations, and nonprofits for adults, previously incarcerated and hospitalized youth, and unhoused populations. She centers her writing around themes of class struggle, the impact of disease, mental illness, ritual, and the supernatural. On the outskirts of the writing world, she teaches Tarot and Tarot writing workshops focusing on strengthening divination abilities along with writing. She is a professional Tarot reader, death worker, and speaks with the dead.
Who is this class for?
This intermediate online writing class is for writers who want to experiment with unreliable narration, fragmented memory, documentary forms, and nonlinear storytelling. Writers may bring an existing project or begin something new, and will leave with a revised manuscript of 2,500 to 4,000 words and a plan for further revision.
What to expect:
What happens when the evidence contradicts the story? When memory becomes unreliable, when a document offers only part of the truth, or when the person telling the story has something to lose? This eight-week creative writing workshop explores the relationship between memory, evidence, and narrative authority. We’ll consider how literary writers use omission, contradiction, fragmented chronology, documentary forms, and competing perspectives to complicate the idea of a single, knowable truth. Rather than treating narrative uncertainty as something to overcome, we’ll investigate how it can become a generative force in fiction, creative nonfiction, and hybrid writing.
Hillary’s approach sits at the intersection of archival material, narrative uncertainty, and the investigative process, where the contradictions and omissions in documents, testimony, and memory can become the foundation of literary structure. Through close readings, weekly discussions, and generative exercises, participants will experiment with testimony, archival fragments, unreliable narration, nonlinear structures, and the relationship between what is remembered and what is recorded. We’ll consider how form itself can challenge narrative authority, allowing contradiction and absence to shape the emotional and structural architecture of a literary work.
Throughout this online writing workshop, writers will develop an original manuscript that incorporates these techniques, moving from shorter experiments into a sustained piece of literary writing. Our emphasis will be on creating work that embraces complexity without sacrificing emotional resonance or coherence. By the end of eight weeks, participants will have a revised manuscript and a clearer understanding of how uncertainty, fragmentation, and competing narratives can deepen their larger writing practice.
What are the writing goals?
In this course, students will complete and revise one literary fiction, creative nonfiction, or hybrid manuscript of approximately 2,500 to 4,000 words. Along the way, students will write short experimental exercises (500 to 750 words each) exploring documentary forms, unreliable narration, fragmented chronology, and competing perspectives, and will finish with a 1 to 2 page revision plan identifying opportunities to deepen narrative complexity, structure, and ambiguity.
During Weeks 1 through 6, Hillary provides individualized, craft-focused written feedback on one weekly submission of up to 750 words, within five business days of the submission deadline. Feedback emphasizes narrative structure, perspective, fragmentation, documentary techniques, and formal experimentation rather than comprehensive line editing. During Weeks 7 and 8, feedback shifts toward the longer manuscript, with one substantive instructor response to the complete draft and a final discussion of revision priorities. Participants also engage in guided peer feedback and discussion throughout the course.
Readings
Readings may include excerpts from:
- Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds (2022): selected excerpts exploring memory loss, family histories, and the instability of inherited narratives
- Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (2019): selected excerpts exploring fragmented testimony, shifting narrative structures, and unreliable memory
- Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (2017): selected excerpts examining institutional documentation, testimony, and the limits of official narratives
- Toni Morrison, Beloved (1987): selected excerpts exploring nonlinear chronology, memory, and competing versions of the past
- Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning (2020): selected essays exploring personal memory, cultural narratives, and the relationship between individual experience and collective history
COURSE OUTLINE
Week 1: The Unreliable Narrator and the Limits of Knowing
Reading: Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (selected excerpts).
Examine how narrative authority is constructed, destabilized, and complicated by memory. We’ll consider the difference between an unreliable narrator and a narrator whose knowledge is necessarily incomplete.
Exercise: Draft a 500 to 750 word piece in which the narrator’s understanding of an event shifts as the narrative unfolds.
Week 2: Memory as an Unstable Archive
Reading: Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds (selected excerpts).
Explore the relationship between memory, inherited histories, and narrative reconstruction. We’ll examine how family stories change through repetition, absence, and conflicting recollections.
Exercise: Create a nonlinear narrative moving between at least three moments in time, using associative rather than strictly chronological transitions.
Week 3: Documents, Testimony, and Found Forms
Reading: Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions (selected excerpts).
Investigate how official documents, questions, testimony, and archival fragments function as literary material. We’ll examine the relationship between institutional language and individual experience.
Exercise: Create a 500 to 750 word documentary or hybrid piece incorporating a fictionalized record, questionnaire, transcript, or another documentary form.
Week 4: The Contradictory Witness
Reading: Toni Morrison, Beloved (selected excerpts).
Explore how competing recollections and partial disclosures complicate characterization and narrative truth.
Exercise: Construct two short accounts of the same event, paying attention to what each narrator notices, omits, misremembers, or refuses to acknowledge.
Week 5: Fragmentation and the Architecture of Absence
Reading: Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings (selected essays).
Consider fragmentation as a deliberate structural choice rather than an absence of continuity. We’ll examine how juxtaposition, associative movement, and shifts between personal and collective histories generate meaning.
Exercise: Assemble a sequence of fragments placing two or more forms of narrative material in conversation without explicitly resolving their relationship.
Week 6: What Remains Unsaid
Reading: Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (selected excerpts).
Examine silence, withholding, and the limits of testimony. We’ll discuss how writers create emotional tension through absence and how narrative restraint can complicate a reader’s relationship to the text.
Exercise: Revise a section of the developing manuscript, removing direct explanation and allowing gesture, image, or structural omission to carry meaning.
Week 7: Assembling the Unreliable Archive
Reading: Valeria Luiselli, Tell Me How It Ends (selected excerpts).
Explore how disparate materials can be assembled into a coherent literary work without sacrificing uncertainty or formal complexity.
Exercise: Organize fragments, documents, scenes, and competing accounts into a complete manuscript draft of 2,500 to 4,000 words. Discussion will focus on sequencing, recurring images, transitions, and the relationship between form and meaning.
Week 8: Revision, Narrative Authority, and the Unresolved Ending
Reading: Ingrid Rojas Contreras, The Man Who Could Move Clouds (selected excerpts).
Examine how uncertainty, inherited narratives, and incomplete knowledge shape a work’s ending.
Exercise: Revise the manuscript with attention to narrative authority, structural coherence, and the difference between productive ambiguity and confusion. Submit the revised manuscript and a 1 to 2 page revision plan.
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- Complete and revise one literary fiction, creative nonfiction, or hybrid manuscript of approximately 2,500 to 4,000 words
- Write short experimental exercises (500 to 750 words each) exploring documentary forms, unreliable narration, fragmented chronology, and competing perspectives
- Build a 1 to 2 page revision plan identifying opportunities to deepen narrative complexity, structure, and ambiguity
- Receive individualized, craft-focused written feedback from Hillary on weekly submissions, plus one substantive response to your complete draft
- Learn how omission, contradiction, documentary forms, and competing perspectives can complicate the idea of a single, knowable truth
- Leave with a clearer understanding of how uncertainty, fragmentation, and competing narratives can deepen your larger writing practice
TESTIMONIALS:
“Hillary Leftwich is your best writing instructor here. She gives the best feedback in the world, helping you become the best writer you can within a compact time frame. She helps you find your voice, your ‘you’ that makes your voice uniquely yours. Her feedback goes beyond written assignments and into discussions, helping you push your critical thinking skills, stretch your mind in new creative directions, and consider the important elements you might be missing in your own story.”
— Former Student
“Hillary is one of the best instructors I had in this program. She was very kind, flexible, attentive, and understanding about students’ varying needs. Her feedback on discussion posts and individual assignments was clearly thoughtful and demonstrated an expertise in the craft. I really loved this course.”
— Former Student
“Hillary demonstrated deep expertise in the subject matter. Her feedback was consistently constructive and focused on promoting student growth, reflecting her commitment to not just delivering information but also actively supporting each student’s development. Furthermore, she fostered an inclusive learning environment that embraced diverse perspectives, creating a classroom atmosphere where all students felt respected and valued.”
— Former Student
“It has been great to grow and build creatively with such a wonderful group under Hillary’s guidance. She engendered trust and confidence in everyone from day one. This course has given me some pretty concrete ideas around a much bigger project. I’m looking forward to seeing where that takes me.”
— Former Student
“Thank you for a wonderful class. It pushed me to write in a way I never have. I loved the passion and knowledge Hillary brought. I hope to take another class with her soon.”
— Former Student
“Hillary’s deeply detailed written feedback, with suggestions unique to my writing, the variety of essay genres, the encouragement to be creative, and the practical schedule for workshopping the writing assignments were all strengths of her workshop.”
— Former Student
ONLINE COURSE STRUCTURE:
This class is asynchronous, meaning you complete the weekly assignments on your own schedule. There are no set meeting times to allow for greater participation; your cohort will consist of writers from different time zones, which allows for a wonderful diversity of voices.
Along with your weekly deadlines, there is plenty of interaction with the instructor and your peers within Wet Ink, our dedicated online classroom. Craft materials, lectures, reading assignments, and writing prompts are all available through the online classroom. Students also post work and provide and receive feedback in the online classroom.
You can finish the work as you see fit, week to week, which is perfect for any schedule. There are discussion questions each week inspired by the assigned readings and topics in the lecture notes. Students are encouraged to take these wherever they find most compelling and/or useful. The instructor engages with these discussions throughout the week, and you will receive feedback on all assigned writing activities.
HOW DOES WET INK WORK?
Wet Ink was built and designed specifically for online writing classes. Wet Ink is private, easy to use, and very interactive.
PAYMENT OPTIONS:
Tuition is $545 USD. You can pay for the course in full or use Shop Pay or Affirm to pay over time with equal Monthly Payments. Both options are available at checkout.