In Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir she states, “In memoir the heart is in the brain . . . self-awareness and faith in the power of truth gives you courage to reveal whatever you unearth” regardless of how you come out looking. This craft talk will focus on how using scene, form, and revision can help memoir and nonfiction writers represent themselves, their companions, and place with honesty and complexity. Using her experience writing Daughter in Retrograde: A Memoir Courtney will share her own process and answer questions.

Courtney Kersten is the author of Daughter in Retrograde a memoir forthcoming from the University of Wisconsin Press in 2018. Her essays can be seen or are forthcoming from River Teeth, Brevity, The Normal School, Hotel Amerika, DIAGRAM, The Sonora Review, Black Warrior Review, The Master’s Review, and elsewhere.Her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize, an AWP Intro Award, and she was the 2016 Writer-In-Residence at the Great Basin Writer’s Residency in Baker, Nevada. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Idaho where she was awarded a Grace/Nixon Fellowship and the Writing in the Wild Fellowship. She has also been awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Riga, Latvia, where she researched Baltic performing arts and literature. 

If you need a sign language interpreter for this event, contact chippewavalleywritersguild@gmail.com a week ahead and we’ll try our best to make it happen.”