LifeWriting
Thursdays, September 23 to November 4
Description: Tap into your creativity with autobiographical writing. This “generative” class will produce a lot of great story starts.
Whether your interests lie in personal essay, memoir, journal writing or even fiction, Lifewriting will help you take your memories and get drafts down on paper. These story starts can then be molded into memoir, personal essays, poetry, or even the basis for new fiction.
We’ll read published pieces and do plenty of in-class writing. You will be encouraged to work on one or two pieces during the course to be workshopped and revised. Most of all, we’ll begin the process of finding some of the best material—taking stories and experiences directly from our lives.
Writer’s Roadmap: This is an excellent course for beginning and intermediate writers interested in creative non-fiction and personal narrative. Especially those who may feel blocked or want direction on which stories to tell.
Lifewriting may be taken multiple times. After completing this class, writers should consider the Craft of Personal Narrative or the Craft of Magazine Writing (Coming in the Spring). Intermediate writers may wish to join the Personal Essay (Coming in the Spring) or Memoir workshops.
About the Instructor: Jack Helbig is a theater critic, arts writer, and essayist for various publications. He regularly writes for the Chicago Reader and the Daily Herald. He is also a playwright; his musical adaptation, Hotel d’Amour, written with Gregg Opelka (and based on Georges Feydeau’s farce A Flea in Her Ear), was first produced by the Buffalo Theatre Company in Chicago and has since been done around the U.S. He has written two plays, Thinking of Her Made Him Think of Her, an autobiographical piece first produced by the Talisman Theatre in Elgin, Illinois, and Kitten With a Whip, produced at the Cafe Voltaire, Chicago, and three ten-minute musicals (The Adventures of Princess Snapdragon, Dry Ice and Dinner with Douglas) (New Tuners, Chicago). He and Gregg Opelka also collaborated on My Night at Jacques’, a modern translation of two one-act comic operettas by Jacques Offenbach, and a new translation of Franz Lehar’s classic, The Merry Widow, which earned rave reviews from both of Chicago’s major dailies when it was produced last summer. He has been keeping a journal since he was in Mr. Kramer’s ninth grade English class at St. Louis U. High. He now working on his 60th journal.
Date/Time: Thursdays 9/23 to 11/4; 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.
Price: Non-Member: $300; Member: $280