Description
The details—
- Level: Beginner to Mid-Level
- Weekly for 12 weeks
- Wednesdays 11 am-12 noon Eastern
- June 4-Aug. 20, 2025
- Live via Zoom
- Participant numbers not limited
- Session dates: June 4 / June 11 / June 18 / June 25 / July 2 / July 9 / July 16 / July 23 / July 30 / Aug. 6 / Aug. 13 / Aug. 20
- Open Mic Night (currently set for Thursday, Aug. 21, 2025, 7 pm Eastern Time)
What you get—
- A stellar summer semester spent writing
- Twelve 1-hour sessions of guidance on writing structure, technique, and craft
- A lesson concerning memoir each session
- An engaging class that you look forward to all week
- Time to write–30+ pieces of your writing by the end of the summer
- Writing prompts
- Pages of important, useful handouts in pdf form
- Link to a Google Drive where handouts, readings, & recordings are posted
- Honest, authentic interest in your story & belief in you
- Opportunities to ask questions of Janisse Ray weekly
- Information on printing, binding, & publishing
- Engagement with other writers
- Access to online Office Hours or Co-working Sessions
- A chance to read your work in an online Open Mic Night
- A receipt to file with your taxes, if you have writing income
Why take the course—
You are living a rich, beautiful, colorful, interesting life. You’re full of stories.
You’d like to get them down on paper. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. It’s hard to keep going once you get a few words. It feels like WORK when it should be FUN.
Let me help you write your own story.
This is a memoir course for writers of all levels. No experience needed.
All you need is a desire to get your stories down on paper for family, friends, and maybe the reading public—while you can.
No life is too large, no life is too small. Everybody has amazing stories. All you have to do is recognize them.
Use your memories, family photos, scrapbooks, diaries, interviews, and memorabilia to help you fill out the details of important stories in your life. Your stories are gold.
Get them on paper now. This is the summer to do it. Escape to your writing space for an hour each week spent with Janisse Ray and work on your own life story.
Your investment—
- $300
- an hour in session each week
- plus at least 1 additional hour at your desk
- a receipt to file with taxes if you have writing income
- & a sincere desire to get your stories down on paper
General schedule for each session—
opening poem
flow-writes
lesson
craft minute
writing practice
Draft syllabus—
CLASS #1—Find the Story & What to Leave Out
CLASS #2—Make Your Writing Come Alive
CLASS #3—Pinpoint Your Theme & Mission
CLASS #4—The Awesome Outline
CLASS #5—Truth & Ethics: Who Gets Hurt
CLASS #6—Honesty & Vulnerability: How to Protect Yourself
CLASS #7—Research, Especially Interviews
CLASS #8—Emotional Impact & Navigating Upset
CLASS #9—Place & Setting
CLASS #10—Revise: 33 Ways to Improve Your Writing
CLASS #11—Using AI or Not
CLASS #12—Get Published & Find Your People
FAQS—
How many sessions are there?
One 1-hour session each week. For folks in the Eastern US/Canada time zone, this hour falls during lunch. Most weeks you will also be invited to an hour-long co-working session.
How many weeks?
12
Is the course virtual?
Yes, via the app Zoom.
Are you live, meaning are you there?
Yes. In real time, as they say.
What if I’ve never used Zoom?
It’s an easy app to install and use. And it’s free.
What if I have to be absent for a session? Is the workshop recorded?
Yes, each session is recorded and will be uploaded to a shared Google Drive.
If there are handouts, how do I access them?
They will be loaded to the shared Google Drive.
How do I access the Drive?
Janisse sends you a link to it.
How will I get the Zoom link?
You will receive it by email from Janisse directly after you register.
May I be in contact with Janisse directly?
Yes, please feel free to contact her either using the Contact Form on the website or at this email address, wildfire1491@yahoo.com.
Bio—
Writer Janisse Ray has earned a living from her writing for more than 30 years. Her first book, Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, told the story of growing up on a junkyard in south Georgia amid endangered longleaf-pine flatwoods. The book sold well, won awards, and was named a New York Times Notable and a Book All Georgians Should Read.
Since Ecology, Janisse has published many books of literary nonfiction, two collections of poetry, and a short novel. Her collection of essays, Wild Spectacle: Seeking Wonder in a World Beyond Humans, was chosen by Pam Houston for the Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence, which carried a $10K award. In 2024 Ray published Craft & Current: A Manual for Magical Writing.
Janisse has won a Pushcart Prize, an American Book Award, and a Southern Environmental Law Center Writing Award, among many others, and has been inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame. She has taught at the University of Mississippi, Hollins University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Bread Loaf Environmental, Orion Online, and many more. She holds an MFA from the University of Montana, where she returned to teach as the William Kittredge Distinguished Visiting Writer.
Janisse lives and works on a historic farm an hour inland from Savannah, Ga. She’s crazy about dark chocolate, wildflowers, blackwater rivers, and the blues.
