This five-session generative workshop will cover what makes memoir and personal essay unique and compelling; how to get started on a memoir or personal essay; some key basics of the craft; and ways to approach writing about traumatic past experiences. Participants should bring several family photographs to work with.

Since 2013, JErri Bell has served as the Managing Editor for O-Dark-Thirty, the literary journal of the Veterans Writing Project. She has published fiction and nonfiction; work in both genres has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She and former Marine Tracy Crow are the authors of It’s My Country Too: Women’s Military Stories from the American Revolution to Afghanistan (University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books, 2017). Her book on the “Golden Fourteen”—the first African American women to serve officially in the US armed forces, is forthcoming from the University of Nebraska Press/Potomac Books.

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