The Desert Nights, Rising Stars
Writers Conference

First-time memoirists and essayists often assume a direct translation between the person they are in real life and the life they make for themselves on the page. But an under-discussed truth about personal narrative is that our "I" must be invented each time, much in the same way that we recreate ourselves for different ages or situations: the classroom, the bedroom, parenthood, sleep. In this craft talk, we will discuss the gap between the "I" we feel we are in the real life and her shadow-self we bring to life on the page, using what we learn in this investigation to explore larger questions regarding narration and characterization--primarily in creative nonfiction, but also in poetry and fiction as well.