Finding A Shape: Structure and Propulsion in Prose with Lauren Markham

​Whether we're working on an essay, a memoir, or a work of narrative journalism, we must identify a shape for our creation. But finding a structure that will simultaneously hold our work and propel a reader through it is some of the hardest work we have to do as writers. The possibilities--and problems--can feel limitless. In this class, we'll look at what structure does, mechanically, for a work of prose, the various forms a structure can take, and how we find the right structure to hold our story.

​​​​​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:

Lauren Markham is a writer based in northern California.

She is the author of  The Far Away Brothers: Two Young Migrants and the Making of an American Life, A Map of Future Ruins: On Borders and Belonging (Riverhead, 2024) and Immemorial (Transit, 2025.)

The Far Away Brothers won the 2018 Ridenhour Book Prize, the Northern California Book Award, and a California Book Award Silver Prize. It was named a Barnes & Noble Discover Selection, a New York Times Book Critics' Top Book of 2017, and was shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Book Prize and the L.A. Times Book Award and longlisted for a Pen America Literary Award in Biography. A Map of Future Ruins was a finalist for the California Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. The New Yorker listed it as a “Best Book of 2024” and Kirkus reviews called it “a remarkable, unnerving, and cautionary portrait of a global immigration crisis.”

A fiction writer, essayist and journalist, her work most often concerns issues related to youth, migration, the environment and her home state of California. Markham has reported from the border regions of Greece and Mexico and Thailand and Texas; from arctic Norway; from gang-controlled regions of El Salvador; from depopulating towns in rural Sardinia and rural Guatemala, too; from home school havens in southern California; from imperiled forests in Oregon and Washington; from the offices of overwhelmed immigration attorneys in L.A. and Tijuana; from the upscale haunts of women scammed on the Upper East Side.

Her writing has appeared in outlets such as VQR (where she is a contributing editor), Harper's, The New York Times Magazine, The Guardian, The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, Guernica, Freeman's, Mother Jones, Orion, The Atlantic, Lit Hub, California Sunday, Zyzzyva, The Georgia Review, The Best American Travel Writing 2019, and on This American Life. She has been awarded fellowships from The Mesa Refuge, UC Berkeley, Middlebury College, the McGraw Center, the French American Foundation, the Society for Environmental Journalists, the Silvers Prize, the de Groot Foundation, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference.

In addition to writing, Markham has spent nearly two decades working at the intersection of education and immigration. She regularly teaches writing in various community writing centers as well as at the Ashland University MFA in Writing Program, the University of San Francisco and St. Mary’s MFA in Writing Programs. She is currently at work on a novel about early California, and edits The Approach.

For updates, follow Lauren on Bluesky @laurenmarkham.bsky.social or Instagram @laurenemarkham