by Writing Workshops Staff
An hour ago
Minda Honey wants you to ask a hard question before you publish a single word about your father: can the relationship survive your honesty, and are you okay if it can't? That is not the tidy reassurance most craft books offer, and it is exactly why her four-week nonfiction workshop feels less like a seminar and more like a lifeline for anyone carrying a complicated family story.
In Daddy Dearest: Writing About Our Fathers, offered through WritingWorkshops.com, the official education partner of Electric Literature, Honey gives writers a container for the material that feels too big, too raw, or too tangled to face alone.
Over four weeks, you will learn to narrow an overwhelming family story by focusing on a small sliver and exploding it outward, build the narrative distance that protects your feelings without sacrificing intimacy with the reader, and study how writers like James Baldwin, Ross Gay, Deesha Philyaw, and Edgar Gomez turn private pain into durable art.
Honey, whose memoir The Heartbreak Years drew praise from Kiese Laymon and Susan Straight, teaches from hard-won experience: the page can hold your truth, and you get to decide how much of it the world sees.
Here is our Meet the Teaching Artist Interview with Minda:
Writing Workshops: Your memoir, The Heartbreak Years, is unflinchingly honest about your own life. When you sit down to write about a complicated relationship, especially with a parent, how do you decide what honesty demands versus what feels like too much exposure? Is there a craft principle that guides you, or is it more instinctive than that?
Minda Honey: Like most things with writing, it happens in waves. First, you just worry about getting the story down on paper. Then, you put it through a few rounds of revisions. Maybe put it in a drawer for a while. Comeback to it after a little time has passed and see how you feel about sharing what you've written with an audience. Sometimes, you might decide you're not comfortable with that and you have to find a different angle on the essay. Sometimes, the essay hinges on this particular truth and so it might be that it's just not fit for public consumption — and that's fine. Beyond the craft and your audience, you also have to consider the stakes when it comes to the relationship with the person you're writing about. Can the relationship endure this kind of public honesty? And if it can't, are you okay with it taking a hit?
Writing Workshops: The course is called Daddy Dearest, and you've included writers like Baldwin, Ross Gay, Deesha Philyaw, and Cheryl Strayed on the reading list, writers who approach difficult family dynamics from very different angles. What thread connects them for you, and what do you hope students will take away from reading them together?
Minda Honey: Definitely their willingness to be honest about a very hard thing. There can be a lot of shame around estrangement, especially these days when it's being spun as a "trend" (like it's a decision anyone comes to lightly). I want students to understand that they're not alone in this painful place and that there are ways to write about loved ones (or former loved ones...) while respecting your own boundaries.
"Can the relationship endure this kind of public honesty? And if it can't, are you okay with it taking a hit?"
Writing Workshops: You've structured the four weeks to move from rage to humor, and to explore how relationships change over time. That feels very intentional, almost like an emotional arc. Can you talk about why you sequenced the course this way, and what you think that progression opens up for writers?
Minda Honey: Usually you gotta cry about something before you can laugh about it. So I think anger is a natural place to begin. And because this is a writing workshop, and not group therapy, I want to demonstrate to students all the wonderful, touching, honest ways you can turn one of the most painful aspects of your life into art. What are the craft choices these writers are making? What are the conventions of the genre that are serving their narrative?
Ready to turn the most painful part of your story into art, with craft instead of catharsis as your guide?
Enroll in Daddy Dearest →Writing Workshops: One of the questions you raise in the course description is What do you owe the reader and what do you owe yourself? That tension seems central to personal nonfiction. Where are you on that question right now, and has your answer changed since you started writing memoir?
Minda Honey: It really is such a core question! I mean, I feel like my answer varies from project to project, essay to essay, era of life to era of life. I think if you're going to put something before an audience, you owe them the truth. But they are not necessarily entitled to that truth because you also have the right to not share everything you experience and/or write with a wide audience. Maybe it's easier for you to be honest and transparent about one aspect of your life, so that's the part you write about and that means it's totally okay to keep the other parts private. We've watched influencers go through this decision-making process in real-time. They saw what happened to content makers who used every aspect of their life to entertain others and often that didn't go well for them. So, now we see many creators who might focus only on cooking content and you wouldn't even know they have 3 kids, a husband and a cockatoo. I don't think that makes them dishonest, just discerning. There are things that I've written about publicly, that other people would never feel comfortable discussing and things I've written about that were hard for me, but ultimately, I'm glad I pushed myself.
Writing Workshops: You've described this class as a "container", a word that suggests both safety and limitation. For writers who feel overwhelmed by the enormity of a family story, what does it look like in practice to narrow the scope? Is there a craft move or technique you find yourself returning to when the material feels unmanageable?
Minda Honey: I like to tell students to focus on a small sliver of the thing and explode it outward. You can return to a moment in your life in your writing as many times as you want! You don't have to say it all or write about it all in one essay. Don't put that kind of burden on your art to be all things at once. You should also be comfortable with the fact you're going to change as a person over time. It's nearly impossible to future-proof your writing (I mean, exercise caution, don't be reckless about what you write! But do know you are not a static entity). But you can always go back and say, "Oh, with more time and insight, I actually feel differently about this."
"Don't put that kind of burden on your art to be all things at once."
Writing Workshops: You came to writing through an MFA, led a BFA program at Spalding, and now you run workshops and send out your newsletter MID. How has your sense of what writers actually need from a classroom shifted over the years, and what made you want to teach this particular class right now?
Minda Honey: I led a BFA program in Louisville, KY during the pandemic, so I had to move the program fully online and also me and my students were living through the midst of an uprising over the unjust murder of Breonna Taylor by the LMPD. So I don't know that my time in academia is all that reflective of what is typical. But what I do know is that I love teaching community-based writing workshops. I actually took writing workshops in every city I lived in throughout my 20s, before entering into an MFA program a few months before my 30th birthday. It really moves me how people find community around words and put themselves out there and make themselves vulnerable because they have a story that needs to be heard. Most of the community classes I teach are adults, so they are taking time out of very busy lives loaded with responsibility to spend a couple hours a week with me. I don't take that lightly. So I focus on giving them actionable writing advice and access to a broad array of resources to help them along their writing journey.
Honey does not take your time lightly, and it shows in how she builds her workshops: small, supportive, and full of actionable craft you can use the moment class ends. If you have a father story that has been waiting for the right room and the right questions, this is the container built to hold it. Enrollment in Daddy Dearest: Writing About Our Fathers is limited to fifteen writers, the sessions are never recorded, and the work you begin here is yours to carry forward. Bring the story only you can tell.
Four weeks, fifteen writers, and a room built for the stories that scare you. Your seat is waiting.
Save Your Seat in Daddy Dearest →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.
