Deepen and broaden your ideas of what memoir can be.

Date: 10 am-4 pm, Saturday 8 July and 10-4pm, Saturday 15 July
Location: Manuka Room, Te Newhanga K?piti Community Centre, Paraparaumu
Faculty: Lynn Jenner
Cost: $150 for two days of tuition and refreshments
To register contact: kirsten@kahini.org

Most people who write memoir have to climb over the obstacle of thinking that it is egotistical to write about yourself. This is perhaps especially true of people brought up with the idea that it is bad manners to talk about yourself. I agree with George Orwell who thought that all writing is, to some extent, egotistical and I don’t believe that memoir is necessarily any more self-absorbed than any other genre. It depends how you approach it.

If you have things you want to talk about, whether they are personal or historical or political, sometimes using yourself as the ‘eye’ is the best way. This is especially true if you want to record things only you would know, or your own ideas or perspectives on something. In this workshop we’ll look at what other writers are doing with memoir, how to let in new ideas when you are describing your own experiences and get constructive feedback on the results.

The workshop is intended for people who have a memoir project underway, or are thinking of writing a memoir. You’ll bring one episode from your memoir text to the first meeting and then, between the first and second meetings, you’ll get a chance to experiment with your memoir style. Then in the second meeting we’ll workshop the pieces and have a go at revising them again..

Limited to 12 participants. To reserve your space contact Kirsten Le Harivel at kirsten@kahini.org.

Lynn Jenner started her writing career at 50 with a year’s full-time study at Whitireia Polytechnic. Since then she has completed an MA and a PhD at the International Institute of Modern Letters and written two books, Dear Sweet Harry (AUP) in 2009 and Lost and Gone Away, (AUP), published in 2015. Dear Sweet Harry won the NZSA Jessie MacKay prize for the best first book of poetry and her memoir Lost and Gone Away was a finalist in the non-fiction section of the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards in 2016. Lynn teaches creative writing and mentors writers. In 2017 she published research into the teaching of creative writing. Lynn’s author website is http://pinklight.nz/.