Here’s What Matters: Starting a Memoir

with Jack Ridl

September 13, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.

Tuition: $200

Materials Fee: N/A

Participants will spend the day exploring, through their preferred form of writing, the things that have profoundly impacted their own lives—whether they are funny, traumatic, serious, sorrowful, or joyous—and turn these stories into the beginnings of a memoir. Using Jack’s suggestions, writers will first talk with one another about what subject they have chosen then, they will have time to explore that choice in writing, after which the group will engage in a delightful debriefing about what showed up as they wrote, culminating in a deeply memorable day.

Plan to bring: Writing utensils and paper or notebook and memorable tokens from your life that may inspire writing.

Jack Ridl, Poet Laureate of Douglas, Michigan, is the author of All At Once (CavanKerry Press), Saint Peter and the Goldfinch (Wayne State University Press), and several other books. His Practicing to Walk Like a Heron was co-recipient of the National Gold Medal for Best Collection of Poetry by ForeWord Reviews. His collection Broken Symmetry was co-recipient of The Society of Midland Authors best book of poetry award for 2006. Then Poet Laureate Billy Collins selected his Against Elegies for The Center for Book Arts Chapbook Award. Individual poems have been published in The Georgia Review, Poetry, Colorado Review, Rattle, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Field, Poetry East, and elsewhere. The students at Hope College named him both their Outstanding Professor and their Favorite Professor, and in 1996 The Carnegie Foundation named him Michigan Professor of the Year. More than 85 of Jack’s students have earned their MFA degree and over 100 are published. Every Thursday Jack hosts and posts on YouTube “The Sentimentalist.” Poetry and Song: A Concert with Carrie Newcomer and Jack Ridl is also available on YouTube. For further information about Jack, his website is www.ridl.com.