A fortnightly life writing course for Autumn 2025 with Kate Potts.
‘Even if you think you know what the story is, you don’t until you write it.’
- Melissa Febos
In five fortnightly in-person sessions we’ll explore considerations and techniques in prose life writing—memoir, autobiography, autofiction, personal essays, and work that crosses boundaries of genre and form.
Focusing on different key aspects of life writing in each session, we will read and discuss a variety of examples including work by Ocean Vuong, Karl Ove Knausgarden, Lemn Sissay, Olivia Laing, Maggie O’Farrell, Maggie Nelson and Polly Rowena Atkin.
The five sessions will focus on (but won’t be limited to) these themes:
1. Writing as research: life writing methods
2. Narrative style and voice
3. Realness and authenticity: the interplay of memory and imagination
4. Multiple selves: time frames and perspectives
5. Form, structure and time: finding a container that suits your work
Though discussion, short writing prompts, ‘homework’ activities and feedback on your own work in a supportive group space, you will develop and hone your writing.
This course is designed for writers with some experience keen to explore the possibilities of life writing or build on work in progress.
Dates: Friday September 19th to Friday November 14th
Time: 10:00am to 12:30pm
Fee: £150.00 / 125.00 concession
Venue: The Exchange, Stroud GL5 1DF
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