Memoir writing workshop with Beth Alvarado.

"Personal history," according to Patricia Hampl, "logged in memory, is a sort of slide projector flashing images on the wall of the mind. And there’s precious little order to the slides in the rotating carousel. Beyond that confusion, who knows who is running the projector?"

This is an apt description of our class: we will generate some pieces of memory, we will discuss ways of shaping them into a larger whole, and we may, finally, come to some understanding of who is running the projector. Bring paper and pens or a laptop, your memory, your imagination and, if you are so inclined, you might read Hampl’s essay, "Memory and Imagination" before we meet. Beth Alvarado will link it to her website www.bethalvarado.com under "Calendar" or you can find it here: https://core1section11.files.wordpress.com/2013/02/hampl-memory-imagination.pdf


Beth Alvarado is the author of four books, Anthropologies: A Family Memoir and Anxious Attachments (essays), and the story collections Not a Matter of Love and Jillian in the Borderlands (forthcoming). She lived in Tucson, Arizona for most of her life, but has relocated to Bend, where she teaches for OSU-Cascades Low Residency MFA program.


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