True stories have the power to connect us with the lives of others—and these deeply personal, yet universal stories provide us with a way of seeing the world through a new lens. But crafting our stories in a way that’s compelling to others is challenging for even the best of writers.

In this workshop, we’ll discuss what makes a memoir, readers’ expectations, and some strategies that can help you shape personal experiences into cohesive, compelling stories. If you’ve got a memoir in the works, that’s great! But you don’t need one for this workshop. We’ll be generating some pieces together and using them to explore these topics.

You’ll come out of this workshop with tools you can use to make your memoir outlines or manuscripts even stronger.

Tanya Gold (they/she) is a book editor, French to English translator, educator, and literary omnivore. They have been in publishing for over 20 years, and have worked on all kinds of cool books. These days, they run their own business, working with authors and publishers on SFF, horror, contemporary fiction, literary fiction, memoir, poetry, interactive/game books, and graphic novels. They also teach online courses for editors and writers and at the Popular Fiction Writing and Publishing MFA program at Emerson College. It has been suggested that they read too much for their own good. This might be true.