Lafayette Library and Learning Center 2019 Writer-in-Residence, Joyce Carol Oates, will conduct an informal workshop on memoir writing on Tuesday evenings April 9, 16, and 23 (6pm - 8pm). The workshop is limited to 10 writers and is free.  Writers must agree to attend all three workshops. 

Joyce Carol Oates is an award-winning author of more than 40 books. She has won the National Book Award for Fiction and has been a regular contender for the Nobel Prize. She was the recipient of the Prix Femina, the PEN American Lifetime Achievement Award, the President's Medal in the Humanities and the 2019 Jerusalem Prize. Ms. Oates is currently Visiting Professor in the UC Berkeley English Department. 

To be considered for the workshop, applicants must be Lafayette residents or Lafayette Library patrons. Interested applicants must submit 30 (double-spaced) pages of memoir for consideration no later than Friday, March 8, 2019. Submit writing samples along with applicants full name, mailing address, email and phone number to Beth Needel, via email, bneedel@LLLCF.org. 

Over the course of the three meetings, work by each writer will be critiqued once. In place of a text for the course, student writers are encouraged, but not required, to read representative memoirs. Examples include Maya Angelou, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Anthony Bourdain, Kitchen Confidential, Alexander Chee, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel, Joan Didion, Blue Nights, Joseph Di Prisco, The Pope of Brooklyn, Mary Karr, The Liar's Club, Kiese Laymon, Heavy: An American Memoir, Steve Martin, Born Standing Up, Joyce Maynard, At Home in the World, Joyce Carol Oates, A Widow's Story, Jonathan Santlofer, The Widower's Notebook, Jeanette Walls, The Glass Castle, Tobias Wolff, This Boy's Life.