Finding Your Literary Voice in Memoir
Speaker: Sue William Silverman
Date: Feb. 19, 2010
Times: 11 AM PST / 12 PM MST / 1 PM CST / 2 PM EST
Cost: FREE FOR NAMW MEMBERS (you will receive the call information via email as the event draws near)
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To write a memoir is to explore a specific theme of your life story by crafting it into art. A large part of this artful writing is to discover the voice, or voices, of any given piece. What voice that best reflects any given story? During the time I wrote my two memoirs, I came to realize that I was actually using two different voices. One, the Voice of Innocence, relates the surface facts or action of the story. The other, the Voice of Experience, deepens the Voice of Innocence through the use of metaphor, irony, and reflection. By twining these two voices together throughout the manuscript, authors achieve a fully realized and compelling memoir.
Of course, when it comes to writing memoir, there’s more to it than craft. Most memoirists must also discover the courage to write, the courage, to reveal long-held family secrets, the courage to dig deep inside and discover our truths. This teleseminar, will also explore techniques to find the courage to share your stories in public.
Sue William Silverman, an award-winning author, will discuss the following:
- The importance of finding an authentic voice with which to tell your story;
- How to develop both the Voice of Innocence and the Voice of Experience for any given memoir;
- Finding the courage to write, to get that voice down on paper.
Sue William Silverman’s memoir, Love Sick: One Woman’s Journey through Sexual Addiction (W. W. Norton), is also a Lifetime television movie, nominated for two PRISM awards by the Entertainment Industries Council. Her first memoir, Because I Remember Terror, Father, I Remember You, won the Association of Writers and Writing Programs award in creative nonfiction. One of her essays appears in The Touchstone Anthology of Contemporary Nonfiction: From 1970 to the Present, while others won contests with Hotel Amerika, Mid-American Review, and Water~Stone Review. Her poetry collection is Hieroglyphics in Neon (Orchises). As a professional speaker, Sue has appeared on The View, Anderson Cooper 360, CNN-Headline News, and a documentary on WE-TV. Sue teaches in the MFA in Writing Program at the Vermont College of Fine Arts, and her craft book, Fearless Confessions: A Writers Guide to Memoir, is published with the University of Georgia Press. Please visit www.suewilliamsilverman.com.
