The Art of Writing Memoir with Marin Sardy (July 17th to August 11th, 2023)

The Art of Writing Memoir
With Critically Acclaimed Author Marin Sardy

Explore the Art & Craft of Writing Memoir and Get Extensive Feedback on Your Writing

You are invited to participate in The Art of Writing Memoir with Marin Sardy.

During this course, you will explore the craft of writing memoir, get extensive feedback on your writing, and personal help with the publication process.

In addition to the personal feedback on your work, Marin Sardy will introduce you to the techniques and craft elements most integral to memoir writing, including:

How to search your memories for the moments that matter most
How to describe moments so that they live and breathe on the page
How to structure your memoir so you can tell your story in the most impactful way possible
How to choose the right path to publication

You’ll also study excerpts from some of the best contemporary memoirs. The examples will illuminate how you can use the fundamental “building blocks” of memoir for maximum impact, while also surprising reader expectations.

Aided by these readings, you’ll explore a wide range of approaches to writing about our own lives, so you can best take advantage of memoir’s unique strengths.

Marin Sardy’s memoir was published by Pantheon, an imprint of Penguin Random House. Her essays have been published by Tin House, The New Yorker online and The Paris Review Daily, among many other places.

She is a successfully published author and an experienced professor and writing teacher, who cares about connecting with students and helping them grow as writers.

Marin is offering extensive feedback on student writing, as a core part of this course. Each week, you will have the opportunity to submit work for feedback from Marin. She will give you detailed notes on up to 5,000 words, plus revisions. She will also guide you through the process of finding publication.

The course starts on Monday, July 17th and ends on Friday, August 11th. For those who need extra time, you will have a full six months to submit work for feedback. You will also be welcome to attend office hours after the course is officially over, so you can stay part of our community. (At no additional cost.)

Because of the extensive personal feedback in this course, enrollment is strictly limited to 22 students. Once the course fills, we will immediately close enrollment.

If you are planning on joining this course, I urge you to enroll right away.

Enroll Now for ~~$625~~ $547(Early Bird Tuition)

A Four Week Workshop on the Art & Craft of Writing Your Memoir

Explore the art of writing memoir, get extensive feedback on your writing, and learn the process of finding publication – all with support from a successful author and instructor.

Four weeks of in-depth lessons on the art and craft of writing the memoir
Detailed feedback on your writing from Marin Sardy.
Personal guidance on the process of finding publication.
Access to live office hours with all of our instructors, even after the course has finished.
Full access to our private community of writers, so you can network with your fellow students.

About Marin Sardy

Marin Sardy is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir The Edge of Every Day: Sketches of Schizophrenia (Pantheon, 2019). Sardy’s book was excerpted in the New Yorker online and her essays have appeared in Tin House, Guernica, the Missouri Review, the Paris Review Daily, and many other journals, as well as in two award-winning photography books. Sardy has three times had her essays listed as “notable” in the Best American series and has been awarded residency fellowships at Hawthornden Castle and Catwalk Institute.

Workshop Schedule

The course starts on Monday, July 17th and ends on Friday, August 11th, 2023. The course comes with daily lessons you can study on your own time, and interaction with Marin Sardy. Everything is provided online, through the digital learning platform hosted by Thinkific.

Note that you will have up to six months after the course finishes to submit your writing for feedback. Also note that you will have access to office hours even after the course is complete.

Daily lessons, available to study any time on our online learning platform, hosted by Thinkific.
Personal feedback on every lesson via email, our online discussion platform, or our private Facebook Group.
Weekly opportunities to submit your work for detailed feedback from the instructor.

Enroll Now

Enrollment is strictly limited to 22 students.
The early bird tuition is available until Monday, July 3rd.

$625.00

Full Tuition

Enroll Now
2 x $273.50

Early Bird Payment Plan

Enroll Now
$547.00

Early Bird Tuition

Enroll Now

Reviews of Workshops with Marin Sardy

Totally appropriate, and exactly what I needed.

Dee Knight

I loved this course. I only wish it could be longer. Every selection was interesting. The writing exercises were provocative and enjoyable. The feedback on my essay submissions were good and useful. I want more!! (That's because the essays I submitted were early chapters of a book manuscript that is under review by a publisher. So any additional help could be very helpful to me.) While Marin's general concept of "the personal essay" doesn't always fit what I'm trying to do, everything she taught was useful to me, and very interesting. It there's a sequel, I would like to sign up!

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Inspiring and Instructive

Susan Cohen

Marin Sardy provides excellent examples and instruction on different essay writing techniques while encouraging writers to share their challenges and fears. Her feedback is tactful and clear, with a keen intuition on where a writer wants to go a...

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Highly Recommend This Fantastic Workshop!

Dana Kinsey

Marin is a gifted and caring teacher, supplying exactly the right feedback to assist in revision. Her honesty was refreshing and her insight was valuable. I never take courses to learn what I'm doing right; I take them to learn the opposite. The pieces she chose as anchors inspired me to reach beyond my current style and really take some risks in terms of content and form. Her suggestions for publishers also proved super helpful. I could say much more, but I think it could be most telling to simply post a link (https://www.prose.onl/read/dana-kinsey) to the first piece I wrote with Marin that was actually published today, one week after the course ended. Without this workshop and Marin's expertise, it would not exist.

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Excellent Introduction to Different Types of Personal Essays

Mary Atkinson

Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Workshop covered so much in a short time. She provided great examples of different ways to approach personal essays along with her insightful comments about them. I especially appreciated her emphasis on each writer's personal process. We write to discover what we want to say and why and then dig deeper in revision. She is truly knowledgeable and passionate about the personal essay. I highly recommend her course!

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The Personal Essay with Marin Sardy

Isa De Quesada

Excellent...when I started I had no idea how to begin an essay and get it published. This course gave me the tools necessary to funnel my writing into an essay form. The structure of the course was incredibly helpful in organizing myself and my wr...

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Excellent workshop

anneke campbell

Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Workshop has been powerful, educational and fun. The workshop is very well organized in bite sized pieces with the right balance of reading, writing and exchange. I particularly appreciate her clarity and the fact that...

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Marin Sardy's Personal Essay Class

Linda Luther-Starbird

I very much enjoyed this class, and I learned that I liked personal essay much more than I had anticipated. This morning I read a review about using personal essay in memoir, which made it all the more interesting. Marin is a very good teacher. She was highly organized, had very useful readings and references for us, and her feedback/critique on my homework assignments was very helpful. I would recommend this class to anyone desiring to learn a new form, or to those already interested in personal essay.

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FAQ

What is the course schedule?

The course starts on Monday, July 17th and ends on Friday, August 11th, 2023. Each week, we will release five lessons that you can study on your own time. These will be a mix of text-based lessons, recommended essays, and pre-recorded lectures. Each lesson comes with text-based discussion with the instructor and the class.

At the end of each week, you will have the opportunity to submit an assignment to the instructor for in-depth feedback.

There will also be two office hour sessions held via Zoom, which will be recorded for those who cannot attend live. They have not yet been scheduled.

Note, that if you fall behind on the course, you will have a full six months to complete the course and submit your work for feedback from the instructor.
How much time will the course require?

Overall, expect to spend around 30 minutes a day on the course. Some days will require less work, some days will require more.

Lessons are released weekly, which gives you flexibility. Based on our experience with other courses, some students do the bulk of their work in one or two days each week, while others spend a little bit of time each day on our courses.
How many students will be allowed to enroll?

Because of the personal feedback Marin is providing, the workshop is strictly limited to 22 students. Once we reach that number we will immediately close enrollment.

Enroll in The Memoir Workshop with Marin Sardy

Enrollment is strictly limited to 22 students.
The early bird tuition is available until Monday, July 3rd.

Enroll Now for ~~$625~~ $547 (Early Bird Tuition)

$625.00

2 x $273.50

$547.00