Beth Kephart
Speeding things up. Slowing things down.
December 10, 2021 
11 AM PST | 12 PM MST | 1 PM CST | 2 PM EST

We want to think that we’re telling the truth, but we find that we’re leaving most everything out—speeding the pages along, speeding the telling of our life. Or we want to transport the reader to our world, and so we find that we are writing slow, carrying a single moment across pages. How do we manage time in memoir? How do we know when to compress (and how), and how do we know when to elongate (and how)? Paul Lisicky, Sallie Tisdale, Sven Birkerts, Patti Smith, Sarah Manguso, Abigail Thomas, and Annie Ernaux will prove instructive here. Question cascades and exercises offered over the course of this illustrated presentation will focus on the art of elongation and compression.

You will learn:

• To consider where and how stories begin
• To study story trajectories
• To consider the ways in which writers might speed time up on the page
• To consider the ways in which writers might slow things down on the page
• There will be a few exercises throughout

Beth Kephart is the award-winning author of three-dozen books in multiple genres, an award-winning teacher at the University of Pennsylvania, a widely published essayist, and a book artist. She is the author of many books on the art of memoir, including her most recent, We Are the Words: The Master Memoir Class. She is also the author of the new memoir in essays, the Booklist-starred Wife | Daughter | Self, a book she built upon the foundation of her vast reading of, and new thinking about, memoir.

Beth’s book website is here: bethkephartbooks.com.

Her handmade books shop is here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BINDbyBIND

Sign up below to receive Zoom access info and recording.