In this workshop, we will begin with an intriguing premise set forth by Phillip Lopate regarding the writing of personal narrative: “The antidote for defensiveness is self-curiosity.” Indeed it is the curious self, the reflective narrator willing to suspend defensiveness and instead cast back into the past to examine her own role in the dynamic, who is most engaging for the reader. We will spend these hours together discussing and then writing about the human impulse to blame the other, to blame the self, and how it is that the narrator can open up that propensity and instead become curious about her behavior and motivations and reactions. As Vivian Gornick reminds us, “We must know the loneliness of the monster and the cunning of the innocent.” 

Limited to 16 participants, contact smkorb@pacificu.edu to register ($125)