The Art of Life: Writing Autobiography Across the Genres
Saturday, May 6 | 11:30 AM - 12:30 PMResidence Inn Berkeley - Ballroom 2
- Literary
- Memoir
- Writing & Publishing
If, like Whitman, we contain multitudes, the life of every writer should bear no shortage of material. But few of us are getting book deals from our Tweets and TikToks. Writing from real life seems to be the domain of memoirists and writers of autofiction, but how can writers from any genre make art from the everyday mess of reality? Where do you draw the boundaries between authentic and artificial, true and untrue? In this session, University of San Francisco faculty members—who’ve written novels, memoirs, and poetry books taking from their lived experiences—will discuss how to get beyond “Write what you know” to explore the richer terrain of writing from who you’ve been. We’ll hear from Ingrid Rojas Contreras (The Man Who Could Move Clouds), K.M. Soehnlein (Army of Lovers), and Preeti Vangani (Mother Tongue Apologize) in a session moderated by USF MFA in Writing Academic Chair Dave Madden.
Book signing information: Sausalito Books by the Bay, at the venue
Sponsored by University of San Francisco MFA in Writing program
