Writing Workshop: Tremors in Time, Transforming Memory into Story with Karen Cheung
There are some stories inside us that feel emotionally urgent, yet every time we try and write about them they fall flat on the page, or we only manage a few sentences before we find ourselves unable to continue. This could be an eventful family holiday, a friendship you're still grieving years after it ended, or a relationship with a difficult family member.
In this two-hour workshop, we'll learn to draw from the raw material in our personal archives – diary entries, photographs, old chat logs, and more – and turn them into a piece of nonfiction writing. We'll learn about and test out various forms such as the fragmented essay, hermit crab essay, or prose poem, letting the material guide the form the piece eventually takes.
Participants are expected to read an assigned essay ahead of the event, which will be discussed during the workshop. This will be followed by sessions for interactive creative writing exercises and a Q&A about memoir writing. By the end of the workshop, participants should expect to generate at least an opening or a few sections they could then use as a jumping-off point for an essay to be completed later in their own time.
Attendees will also receive a downloadable presentation and video recording.
Time: 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. U.S. EST
Location: Zoom
Price: $40 USD regular admission / $20 USD discount rate for students, members, and recent graduates.
For those interested in the discount rate, please email nuvoices@protonmail.com specifying your graduation year, uni name, and why you would like to attend this workshop. Discount codes will be sent via email request only.
*** A Zoom link will be emailed to all registrants one day before the workshop from nuvoices@protonmail.com ***
All proceeds of this workshop will be distributed to our workshop leaders and to support the NüVoices’ ongoing editorial and nonprofit operations. We encourage participants and community members to donate to our Paypal page if you are financially able to support our ongoing initiatives.
About our workshop instructor: Karen Cheung is a writer from Hong Kong. She is the author of The Impossible City: A Hong Kong Memoir, which was longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, and named one of the best books of the year by the Washington Post and The Economist. She's written for the New York Times, Feeld Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Oxonian Review, the Rumpus, and other publications. She has an MA in Creative Writing (New Prose Narratives) from Royal Holloway, University of London.
NüVoices is an international editorial collective gathering veteran and emerging writers, journalists, translators and artists to celebrate and support the diverse creative work of women and other underrepresented voices/communities working on the subject of China (broadly defined). Founded in 2018 and supported by Patreon donors, NüVoices is an independent not-for-profit organization. The views and opinions expressed by contributors on our platforms do not necessarily reflect those of NüVoices.
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