Memoir and Life Writing with Gillian Slovo

Three-month course begins Monday 3^rd October 2011 

Faber and Faber
Bloomsbury House
74-77 Great Russell Street
London WC1B 3DA

The Faber Academy,  Memoir and Life Writing: A Three Month course

This intensive practical course, led by novelist Gillian Slovo whose family memoir Every Secret Thing: My Family, My Country was a world bestseller, will examine the essential elements of memoir and life writing. Structured around a series of seminars and workshops this course is aimed at both new and more established writers wanting to write a memoir.

The last fifteen years have seen a great expansion of the personal and the family memoir. From the angst ridden accusations in  Christina Crawford's  Mommie Dearest to Edwmund de Waal's prize-winning cool exploration of his  family history through a series of tiny pottery figurines, such books  have attracted increasingly large  audiences.  And they have also attracted writers.  

While memoir can be a way of looking back over a life lived well or badly but mostly gone, it increasingly takes as its focus a particular time, a particular country and a particular set of circumstances that tell us, not only about an individual, but about a whole era. Each story is unique and in each is contained the well spring of a person's life. Through the reading of memoirs, and in-class peer review of each student’s work, this three month course aims  to progress each student's work - a rewarding way to learn how to explore the past and, at the same time, develop voice and style.  

Over the course of three months Gillian Slovo will lead sessions on planning, research, structuring and editing memoir and life writing plus workshops on individual students’ writing. The course will also include two guest seminars led by other well-known memoirists.

Reading List

Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Edmund de Waal: The Hare with the Amber Eyes

Eva Hoffman: Lost in Translation

Primo Levi: If this is A Man

Blake Morrison:  And When Did You Last See Your Father?

Gillian Slovo: Every Secret Thing

Jeanette Winterson: Oranges are not the only Fruit

About the Course Director

South African born Gillian Slovo has published 12 novels and  a family memoir. She started in crime, writing five novels featuring her detective    Kate Baeier, before branching out into narrative driven literary fiction. Ice Road,  set in Leningrad in the 1930s, was short listed for the 2006 Orange Prize. Red Dust,  her novel based around the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa won the RFI Temoin du Monde prize and was made into a film starring Hilary Swank and Chiwitel Ejiofor.   Her memoir Every Secret Thing , that told the story of a family dominated by the dramatic politics of  apartheid South Africa, was a world best seller.

Course Programme

All classes will be based at the offices of Faber & Faber:

Bloomsbury House

74-77 Great Russell Street

London WC1B 3DA

The course consists of 12 two hour evening sessions and one full Saturday session. Evening sessions will take place on Mondays from 7.00pm-9.00pm.  The full-day session will take place from 10.00am-5.00pm on Saturday 26^th November.

The subject matter of sessions as listed below is a guide only.  The exact course content will be finalized according to the experience and interests of the group and guest speaker availability.   The detail of the course content is at the discretion of the Course Directors and the Faber Academy.