Advanced Personal Essay Workshop [Peter Mountford]

Hilary Mantel said: “Memoir’s not an easy form. If other people are to care about your life, art must intervene.” It can be disorienting to transform actual people and events into characters and plot elements in an essay or memoir, but this is how writers turn journal entries – written for the author’s benefit – into literature, which exists for readers’ benefit. In this workshop, we’ll explore the nuanced and delicate art of transforming a personal anecdote into a publishable essay.