411F Fall 2025 Memoir Writing

Memoir Writing is a workshop designed with the objectives of learning about this genre, reading and discussing professional writers’ attempts at sharing their stories, exploring ways to connect to one’s past, playing with language and memory through a variety of prompts, and learning ways to craft one’s own memoir into an effective piece of writing. In meeting these goals, it is the instructor’s hope that our wonderful group of writers evolves into a community who: engage in the various writing prompts, support each other’s efforts and works-in-progress, praise and support experimentation and risk-taking even when those experiments and risks don’t entirely work, and project genuine interest in each other’s pieces of writing.

Ron Shapiro is an award winning retired teacher and a Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia Writing Projects Fellow. His poetry has been published in more than 20 magazines. Understory, his first book of poems, has just been released.