Howard Norman
Author
Private Memoir Workshop
2020 - 2021
This is a personal memoir workshop for those of you who are at the early, middle, or later stages of writing a memoir.
Every sort of autobiographical narrative is welcome. Of course, it can be a memoir about someone other than yourself.
Style, tone, narrative strategy--all will be discussed.
I will work with you to shape and refine your memoir on a 12-l8 month basis. This includes a bi-weekly review and editorial comments, a once-a-month telephone or in-person conversation, all toward the composing of a final manuscript.
At the end of this contractual period, we evaluate your manuscript together, and then discussions about editors, agents, and publishing can take place.
Fee negotiable.
About the Author
Howard Norman received the Lannan Prize in literature as well as three fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship, a John Simon Guggenheim fellowship, and a Whiting Award. Since 1988 he has taught in the MFA program at the University of Maryland. This summer he was on the faculty at the Napa Valley Literary Conference. He has taught memoir workshops in Montreal, Amsterdam and London. He is the author of eight novels, three memoirs, children's books and screen scenarios. He has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award in fiction. His most recent novel is The Ghost Clause, released this summer.
His new memoir is on friendship and the painter Jake Berthot, When News Filtered to the Angels, They Were Overwhelmed by Their Aloneness.
“I was convinced that birds were kinds of souls. Not the souls of people but of previous birds whose mystery and beauty were so necessary on earth that God would not allow them to be anything in their second life but birds again.”