Summer Memory Bank Workshop

The Memory Bank writing workshop is a generative project designed to help writers build up a foundation of ideas and memories that can be returned to whenever the blank page becomes too daunting. Our experiences and memories provide context, background, meaning, references, and whole worlds for our writing. Each of the three sessions is composed of a generative period, revision, and discussion based on our personal experiences. This format allows writers to gain confidence in our own writing and memories thanks to the support of the sessions and communal experience. The sessions will focus on home and place, people and characters, and finally the bigger picture of historical context and world-building. By the end, each writer will have developed a unique bank of memories and writing to draw on and develop.

The goal of the Memory Bank is simple: to prove to the writer that their personal experiences and memories are more than enough creative material to beat any writer’s block.

In these three writing sessions, we will begin to develop a personal “memory bank” for each student—a place to store experiences and memories that can later be used for writing. Developed around three themes: place/home, people, and community; each session will involve a generative project, a revision, and a discussion centered around the places we live, the people we meet, and the communities we participate in. At the end of three sessions, we will have developed (or begun to develop) a robust place for each writer to draw on their memories, an in-progress memory bank, that writers can rely on, and add to, for the rest of their writing lives.

To Apply for the Workshop, register here: