Grackle artwork by artist Helen Farrar
Beyond the words we use to talk about our most important life experiences, there is always more. We each have unique ways we have moved through the universal experiences of love, loss, anger, fear, and hope. As we drill down into our writing, we find ways to express more than we have understood before. Writing is not merely a way to record what what already know; it is a process of discovery.
In this memoir workshop, we will read the work of essayists such as Roland Barthes, Kimiko Hahn, Audre Lorde, and Aimee Nezhukumatathil. We will devote part of each evening to in-class writing, using those essays as springboards into our own lives. We will also provide guided, focused feedback for each member of this community of writers. You can expect to produce a collection of first drafts, as well as a more finished essay.
Robin Reagler is a writer of poetry and prose based in Houston, Texas. Over the past 22 years, she transformed Writers in the Schools (WITS), a small grassroots organization, into a national literary movement with 40 sister programs across the US. Her book Into The The, winner of the Best Book Award, was recently released (Backlash Press) and Night Is This Anyway, will be published by Lily Poetry (March 2022). Reagler is the author of Teeth & Teeth, selected by Natalie Diaz, winner of the Charlotte Mew Prize (Headmistress Press, 2018) and Dear Red Airplane (Seven Kitchens Press, 2012, 2018). She earned an MFA at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and a PhD at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program. She has published in Ploughshares, North American Review, Pleiades, Copper Nickel, Iowa Review, Colorado Review, and Zocalo Public Square. The Other Mother: Letters from the Outposts of Lesbian Parenting was named best Houston parenting blog by Nickelodeon in 2009.