Chris Belcher

Arts, Culture, & Society II: What (in the world) Is Your Book (or your essay) About?

Friday, December 13, 2024, 2:15 to 3:30 p.m.

Browse any “best of” list of memoirs published over the past few years, and you’ll see many descriptions that showcase a shared world, often de-centering the author’s personal story as the animating force of the memoir. Take this description of Manjula Martin’s The Last Fire Season, written by Nicole Chung for Esquire: “A memoir threaded with natural history and a complicated love letter to the wild and imperiled California landscape Martin calls home, The Last Fire Season shows readers one way to both hold grief and look for new possibilities in the face of an uncertain future.” This seminar will consider how memoir and personal narrative essay writers find audiences and connect to them through focused effort on articulating a shared world, alongside (or perhaps even over) the narration of their inner worlds and personal experiences. Through an examination of texts that integrate original reporting or research into their storytelling, we will consider the importance of figuring out what in the world your book (or essay) is “about,” and highlighting that thing for agents and editors (and more importantly, readers). We will engage in a craft exercise meant to aid in foregrounding a shared world in personal narrative writing.

Required Reading (in Reader):

Chung, Nicole. “The Best Memoirs of 2024 (So Far).” Esquire, 24 Aug. 2024.

Rebolini, Arianna. “The Best Memoirs of 2023.” Vulture, 6 Dec. 2023.