
How to Write a Tragicomic Memoir Zoom Seminar with Elissa Bassist, Saturday, June 3rd, 2023
Saturday, June 3rd, 2023
Live Seminar via Zoom from 2:00PM - 5:00PM EST
Now Enrolling!
Any questions about this class? Use the Chat Button (lower left) to talk with us.Elissa Bassist is the editor of the “Funny Women” column on The Rumpus and the author of the award-deserving memoir Hysterical. As a founding contributor to The Rumpus, she’s written cultural and personal criticism since the website launched in 2009. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Creative Nonfiction, and more, including the anthology Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture, edited by Roxane Gay.
Writing a full-length book about yourself is a thrilling, empowering, ideal experience; it’s also horrifying, humbling, and impossible.
In this seminar, I'll share how I did it and how you can, too, from recyclable drafts to book proposal to publication. I'll reveal my insights, secrets, and instructions on "rule of three."
I'll show off my notebooks and rejections. I'll gossip about my research and revision strategies. I'll weigh the pros and cons of panic attacks and discuss how to keep going during the “I quit” episodes of a years’ long process.
Preparation and workload: Read (and love) Hysterical (if you want). There are also tons of handouts (to be referenced during classes) and brainstorming and writing exercises (to be done in class) to bring out what you have to offer the world that it’s missing.
COURSE TAKEAWAYS:
- Learn how to get total strangers interested in reading your life story.
- In-class brainstorming to develop your personal narrative and universal themes.
- Productivity and preservation hacks.
- Novella-length handouts on what every tragicomic memoir needs
- You want to hone your ability to write a tragicomic comedy (about your life).
- You're an aspiring memoirist or comedy writer.
- You want to infuse humor into your writing, emails, dating profiles, etc.
- You want to expand your tools as an artist.
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Class is on Saturday, June 3rd, 2023, via Zoom from 2:00PM EST - 5:00PM EST
If you have questions, please use the Chat Button or contact us via email HERE.