Description
Memoir lives not only in what we remember, but in how we remember—through the acoustics of language, the cadence of the body, and the structure of experience. In this four-week craft-centered seminar, multi-genre writer Paul Lisicky invites participants to explore the deep architecture of memoir at the level of the sentence and the scene. Designed for writers who want to bring more presence, vitality, and distinctiveness to their prose, this course emphasizes language as an ongoing act of seeking, arrival, and return.
Each session will feature a casual lecture combining close readings, practical suggestions, and examples from multiple writers, recently published and long established. Sessions will also offer brief generative exercises and plenty of time for participants to ask questions. This won’t be a workshop in the expected sense, though participants will be encouraged to write, read, and take notes between sessions. Sessions will be recorded for those who miss a class or wish to revisit material.
Writers at all stages are welcome, whether you’re beginning from fragments or seeking fresh perspectives on a work-in-progress or need nourishment for your next project. The class will attend to both book-length works and short pieces and everything in between. No required readings beforehand, but a suggested reading list will be provided at class’s end.
Week 1: Sound and Sense – Exploring music, breath, repetition, pauses, and the acoustics of memory.
Week 2: Texture and Description – Making abstraction palpable; sensory description for emotional and thematic depth.
Week 3: Scene and Structure – Constructing scenes that move between the spoken and the interior; choreography, pacing, tension.
Week 4: Vision in the Micro – A close reading of individual, iconic paragraphs to locate voice, pattern, and worldview. How does the granular imply the global?
Lectures will be presented live; they will also be recorded so you can catch up on a class you missed or review the material again. Recordings will only be available until December 4, 2026. We encourage you to watch before this date, as there will not be an extension for viewing after December 4 at 11:59pm CT.
PLEASE NOTE: THIS IS AN OPEN-ENROLLMENT COURSE, WITH AN UNLIMITED NUMBER OF SEATS AVAILABLE. The Zoom meetings will likely have a few hundred people in it each week. This will not affect the quality of lessons you receive, but we want expectations set before the class begins that participation will be limited to the chat box.
