Between World and Self: The Art of Researched Memoir with Erica Berry

​How might narratives from history, literature, or the natural world complement the telling of our own personal life stories? And how do you balance pivoting between interior and exterior landscapes without losing the reader?

In this 90-minute craft workshop, Erica Berry—author of Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear (Flatiron, 2023) and of researched personal essays for The New York Times, The Guardian, Outside, Orion, The Yale Review, among other publications—will share creative techniques and structural advice for navigating this buzzy genre, commonly referred to as “memoir-plus” in the publishing industry. 

From discussing what makes a successful ‘braid,’ to plotting out the writing process with these more experimental narrative structures, this interactive class will include analysis of short readings as well as shared (and take-home) generative prompts.

​​​​FAQ

• ​​​​I'm unable to join live. Will the event be recorded?
  Yes! The event will be recorded and shared with ticket-holders via email the following day. You will have one month to watch the workshop before the recording expires.

• ​​​​How can I participate during the event?
  You will be joining a Zoom Meeting for this event. We encourage you to have your camera on, but remain muted until prompted. We also recommend that you to come prepared with writing materials!

• ​​​​I live outside the U.S. Can I still join?
  Yes! We have many international members in Sustenance. We'd love to see you there no matter where you're tuning in from.

​​BIO:

Erica Berry’s nonfiction debut, Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear, was published in February 2023 by Flatiron/Macmillan (US+Canada), and Canongate (UK+Commonwealth) in March 2023. Wolfish is a finalist for the Oregon Book Award and a semifinalist for the Pacific Northwest Book Award. You can read a bit about the book here and see a related essay here. 

Her essays, often about the intersection between feelings and the natural environment, appear in The New York Times, Orion, The Yale Review, The Guardian, Aeon, Literary Hub, Wired, Outside, Colorado Review, and The Atlantic, among others. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize, she has received grants and fellowships from the Ucross Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources.

The 2019-2020 National Writers’ Series Writer-in-Residence in Traverse City, Michigan, Erica is on the summer faculty of the Orion Environmental Writers’ Workshop, and also teaches at Literary Arts, the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, and the New York Times Student Journeys.

She graduated from Bowdoin College in 2014, and received her MFA from the University of Minnesota as a College of Liberal Arts Fellow in 2018. She now lives in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, where she is a Writer-in-the-Schools and an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters.