Meet the Teaching Artist: Aimee Seiff Christian on Building a Memoir from the Pages You Already Have
by Byron Turner
2 hours ago
Memoir, Aimee Seiff Christian likes to remind her students, is not "what happened." It is not a collection of vivid memories or beautiful sentences, though it may contain all of those things. Memoir is movement, change. As she puts it, a memoir is I used to be this, now I am this, and the memoir is the story of how I got there.
That deceptively simple definition is also a diagnostic, and it sits at the center of Building the Book from the Pages You Already Have, her 6-week memoir manuscript workshop with WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature.
The class is built for memoirists and personal nonfiction writers who already have material, whether 20 pages or 100, and need help seeing the shape of the book those pages may be pointing toward. Over six Thursday evenings beginning August 20, 2026, Aimee, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Poets & Writers, The Rumpus, and Hippocampus, will help you map your manuscript's current structure, diagnose its narrative engine, and build a concrete revision roadmap. You'll study sequence, repetition, the relationship between scene and reflection, and the small craft moves (replacing "and then" with "but" or "therefore" is one of her favorites) that turn lived experience into story. You'll leave with a re-sequenced packet of pages, targeted feedback on up to 15 pages of your manuscript, and a clear plan for what to cut, expand, reorder, and draft next.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Aimee:
Writing Workshops: Hi, Aimee. Please introduce yourself to our audience.
Aimee Seiff Christian: I'm a memoirist, essayist, writing teacher, and bird person. I write about family, adoption, secrecy, estrangement, motherhood, disability, bodies, and the strange ways we survive what shaped us. I grew up in New York City, live in Massachusetts, and spend a lot of my life working in animal welfare, traveling for my children's figure skating competitions, and trying to keep twenty small birds alive and happy. I believe in messy drafts, small assignments, truthful sentences, and building a writing life that can survive inside an actual life.
Writing Workshops: What's the thing you wish someone had taught you earlier in your writing life, and how does this class address that?
Aimee Seiff Christian: I wish someone had taught me earlier that memoir is not just "what happened." It is not a collection of vivid memories, beautiful sentences, or meaningful scenes, though of course it may contain all of those things. Memoir is change, movement. I often describe it this way: I used to be this, now I am this, and the memoir is the story of how I got there.
That sounds simple, but it took me a long time to understand how much craft lives inside that sentence: the shaping intelligence of the present-day narrator, the pressure that forces change, the scenes that earn that change, and the structure that helps a reader feel the transformation rather than simply being told about it.
This class exists to help writers with pages begin to see the larger project those pages may be pointing toward. We look at openings, tension, structure, revision, and the practical problem of turning lived experience into art without flattening its complexity. I'm the right person to teach it because I know both sides of that work: the private difficulty of writing from one's own life, and the craft discipline required to make that experience legible, urgent, and alive for a reader.
Writing Workshops: If a student walks away from this class with one skill or shift in their writing they didn't have before, what is it?
Aimee Seiff Christian: They will learn how to look at their own pages and identify what the piece is asking to become.
More specifically, they'll be able to diagnose whether a draft has a clear narrative engine: what the narrator wants, what pushes back, what pressure builds, and what changes by the end. They'll also learn to revise for that engine by strengthening openings, clarifying stakes, using scene and reflection with intention, and making structural choices that help a reader feel movement on the page.
The shift I want most is for students to stop asking only, "Is this good?" and begin asking, "What is this piece doing, and how can I help it do that more fully?"
"Memoir is change, movement. I used to be this, now I am this, and the memoir is the story of how I got there."
Writing Workshops: What's the last sentence you read that made you stop and reread it? Type it out for us.
Aimee Seiff Christian: "The story of my body is not a story of triumph." — Roxane Gay
Describe a moment in a workshop, one you were teaching or one you took as a student, where something clicked for someone. What happened?
In a recent workshop, a writer brought in pages that were beautifully written yet airless. The language was careful and intelligent, and the room was quiet in that way workshop rooms get when everyone can tell there is real material on the page, but no one can quite find the way into it yet. The writer had written around the central moment with enormous skill. There were reflections, context, images, even a few gorgeous lines. But the scene itself kept receding.
I asked, "But what did you want in that moment?"
She paused for a long time and finally said, "I wanted her to choose me."
The whole conversation shifted. Not because I had given her some brilliant answer, but because she had found the heat in those pages. Once she could name that, we could see what belonged on the page: the obstacle, the pressure, the gestures, the silence, the cost of not being chosen.
That is one of my favorite workshop moments: when the problem stops being "Is this good?" and becomes "Oh. This is what the piece is actually about."
Writing Workshops: What's a craft move you're slightly obsessed with right now? Not a big concept, but a small, specific technique.
Aimee Seiff Christian: I'm slightly obsessed with the small structural move of replacing "and then" with "but" or "therefore."
It sounds almost too simple, but it changes everything. "And then" gives us chronology: this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. "But" gives us complication. "Therefore" gives us consequence. Using those gives us tension on the page.
It's tiny, but it helps a writer turn an experience into a story.
That kind of practical, structural craft move is exactly the territory of this six-week workshop. Bring your pages, and learn to revise for the engine inside them.
Enroll in Building the Book →Writing Workshops: What's a book you press into people's hands that has nothing to do with writing craft?
Aimee Seiff Christian: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster.
I loved it as a child because it was funny and strange and full of impossible places. I love it even more as an adult because every time I return to it, it gives me something different. It is a book about boredom, attention, language, numbers, imagination, education, and the danger of moving through the world half-awake — but it never feels like it is trying to teach you a lesson.
I give a copy to every new friend. You can read it at eight and read one book, then read it at forty-eight and find another book entirely. It keeps opening trap doors. Every rereading reveals another joke, another ache, another bit of wisdom hiding inside the play.
Writing Workshops: What's the worst writing advice that sounds smart?
Aimee Seiff Christian: "Write every day."
I understand why people say it, and for some writers it works beautifully. But as universal advice, I think it can be brutal and unimaginative.
Most writers I know are not living inside clean, protected writing lives. They have jobs, children, caregiving responsibilities, illnesses, grief, money stress, aging parents, disabled bodies, exhaustion, and a hundred ordinary interruptions. If "real writers write every day" becomes the rule, then the minute someone misses a day, they feel like they have failed.
That shame does not usually make better art.
Writing Workshops: Finish this sentence: "Most writing classes won't tell you this, but..."
Aimee Seiff Christian: ...the beautiful sentences are not always the problem, and they are not always the solution.
A piece can be beautifully written and still not know what it is doing. It can have gorgeous images, sharp lines, emotional intelligence, and still lack pressure, movement, shape, or a clear reason for the reader to keep turning the page.
Sometimes the bravest revision is not making the language prettier. It is asking the less glamorous questions: What does the narrator want? What changes? Where does the pressure build? What is this piece really trying to say?
I love beautiful sentences. I really do. But I do not want students polishing a page that does not yet have a pulse.
"I love beautiful sentences. I really do. But I do not want students polishing a page that does not yet have a pulse."
Writing Workshops: Who was your first literary crush?
Aimee Seiff Christian: Probably The Phantom Tollbooth, by Norton Juster.
do not think I would have had this language when I read it for the first time (when I was nine), but that book made me understand that words could be toys, doors, traps, bridges, jokes, and tiny machines for changing the way you see the world.
I loved Milo and Tock, but I think my real crush was on the book itself: its delight in language, its weirdness, its seriousness hiding inside play. It made me feel that a book could be funny and profound at the same time, which is still one of my favorite combinations and is so hard to do.
Writing Workshops: What's your teaching vibe, in one sentence, not a paragraph?
Aimee Seiff Christian: Warm, practical, nonjudgmental, and allergic to shame — but very serious about the work.
Writing Workshops: What would your students be surprised to learn about you?
Aimee Seiff Christian: I live with more than twenty tiny rescued/rehabbed birds, which means I spend a surprising amount of my life negotiating with creatures who weigh less than an ounce and have very strong opinions.
There's something fitting about a memoir teacher who spends her days negotiating with creatures who weigh less than an ounce and have very strong opinions. Patience, attention, and the careful work of helping fragile things take shape: that's the work of revision, too. If you have pages that are beginning to look like they want to become a book, this six-week workshop will help you see what those pages are asking to become and build the roadmap to get you there. Six Thursdays, beginning August 20, 2026. Bring your messy draft.
Six Thursdays. Your existing pages. A working revision roadmap by week six. Enrollment is open now.
Save Your Seat in Building the Book →WritingWorkshops.com is an independent, artist-run creative writing school and the official education partner of Electric Literature. Since 2016, we've helped writers strengthen their voice, develop a greater understanding of craft, and forge a path to publication.
