Life Writing and Memoir

" Memoir isn't the summary of a life, it's a window into a life, very much like a photograph in its selective composition. It may look like a casual and even random calling up of bygone events. It's; it is a deliberate construction. " - William Zinsser

So what can I expect … what makes this workshop so special?

We help you work through your own private process of finding and moulding your style and tone without compromising your content, without compromising your right to tell your story.

In the Life Writing & Memoir program, you’ll learn:

• ways to think about, record and translate personal experiences turning them into compelling stories that demand a reader’s attention and admiration
• how to write with confidence and authenticity about all the people in our lives
• the ethics in writing honestly about family without tossing a grenade into the real life relationships. Compromise — blending and disguising people in a plausible way
• about the truth and nothing but the truth — how to unlock private life stories into gripping reads with universal themes and wide public appeal
• the right details and research so readers find true and compelling characters in the pages or on the screen. We walk you through writing yourself into a character
• about spinning poetry into the ordinary and the art of artistic license and discernment within Memoir. This is not biography — you’ll come to know the difference!

" You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better. " - Ann Lamott

Great memoir breaks a lot of rules. And great memoir also relies on many of the rules of fiction. There must always be a recognisable path from which to deviate and/or come back to. This weave is critical in writing your life story. To make it captivating, characters must feel real, they must adhere to the same rules of characters in fiction.

Workshop presenters

Shelley Kenigsberg is a prominent freelance editor, writer and trainer who’s worked in publishing for over 30 years. She works in most genres (except scientific books) for publishers (Penguin Random House, Murdoch Books/ Pier 9, TAFE NSW, McGraw-Hill, Brandl & Schlesinger, among them); with writers self publishing, and with commercial and government organisations. Her favourite? Being editor/writing mentor and the privilege of working on a  diverse and fascinating list of projects. A recent project has been as co-writer/ ghostwriter on a memoir.

In-house to start, Shelley was with Harcourt Brace, Harper Collins, then John Wiley, and Macquarie University. Since 1998, she’s been freelance as proprietor of S K Publishing, in Sydney.

She’s been Head of Macleay College’s Book Editing and Publishing Diploma for the past 23 years and led long and short courses in editing and writing. She’s presented at literary festivals and writers’ centres in Australia and in Indonesia, Singapore, Japan and South Africa. She has been an active member of state and national editing societies (president, NSW society 2000–‘03; vice president ‘03–‘06) and chaired committees for the Institute of Professional Editors (IPED), Australia.

Paul C Pritchard has been a working writer for over 25 years: copy writer, feature writer, short story writer, poet and commercial ghost writer. He has a BA in English Language and Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. He teaches creative writing, and works as an art therapist using creative writing as a healing tool. He now lives in Canberra.

“The act of writing often expresses what the voice cannot. So much can be revealed about the internal struggle or healing process through the words that have fallen, bounced, hurled, skipped or arrived kicking and screaming onto the page. The act of writing can become a great resource; a really safe confidant and friend. I believe that if we dig deep we will find diamonds in the rough. We can keep these diamonds close to our hearts or we can scatter them through novels, short stories and poems. First we write the diamonds and then we polish them.”

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