In this introductory lecture and discussion, Jane Ganahl will talk about personal essay and memoir, how they’re related, and how personal essay can be a valuable building block toward a longer memoir. On a basic level, essays offer the writer a chance to hone their writing skills and writer’s voice. And writing essays can also challenge the author to focus on a theme that might be used for a longer work, dig deep into it, and explore the perspective and life lessons critical to a good memoir. With memoirs-in-essays enjoying a wave of popularity in recent years (Esmé Weijun Wang’s The Collected Schizophrenias and Ann Patchett’s These Precious Days, to name just two), writing essays can lead to fantastic new projects.
Jane Ganahl is a writer, teacher, and co-founder of the Litquake festival. As a Hearst newspaper journalist for many years, she wrote the “Single Minded” column for the Chronicle, which led to her memoir, Naked on the Page: The Misadventures of My Unmarried Midlife. She was also the editor of the anthology Single Woman of a Certain Age. Her essays have appeared in five different anthologies, on Match.comcom, and in the magazines Spirituality & Health, VanityFair.com, RollingStone.com, Huffington Post, Bazaar, and Salon, among other places. She is also a crazy cat lady, with a small nonprofit that tends feral colonies on the San Mateo County coast. Learn more at http://janeganahl.com/ .
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