Braiding Our Stories, Weaving Our Lives: Writing the Lyric Essay (an online program)

What is new is not what we tell, but how we tell it. The lyric essay is one way to do this: it demands (or perhaps gently asks, with a knowing smile) that we stay awake to the chance associations and intuitive connections that make life bearable and to create those very connections through the act of writing. ~ Brenda Miller, “A Braided Heart: Shaping the Lyric Essay”

The lyric essay is a beautiful form of creative nonfiction that combines elements of memoir and personal essay, poetry and sometimes scholarly research. This is an exciting and creative way to write about our lives and the wider world around us, and we recreate the form each time we write. Susan Griffin observes, “At its best, the lyric essay accurately locates the writer in the ‘great soup of being’ – the confusions of lived time, the jagged shape of thought, the betrayals and silences of the body.”

In the course of this eight week program we will explore its possibilities and braid the stories of our lives into a lyric essay. Weekly sessions will include writing, guided visualization, discussion of several published lyric essays, and time for reading out loud in the group. An individual consultation is included in the registration fee, along with written feedback on ten pages of writing. Repeat participants are welcome.

Dates: 8 Wednesdays, 10 am-12:30 pm (Pacific Time); June 9, 16, 23, 30, July 7, 14, 21, 28, 2021