When you talk about your life, do people say you should write a book?

Now’s the time! No matter where you are in your memoir-writing journey, this 4-week workshop-based course will help you start, develop, or revise your memoir. We’ll be discussing structure & story arc (beginnings, middles, and ends), development, and tapping into deeper meaning & the universal, as well as other craft issues. We’ll also cover publishing opportunities and possible markets for your work. This course includes a manuscript evaluation (up to 10 pages). Limited to 9 participants.

This class takes place from 4-6 PM every Wednesday in February (1, 8, 15, 22) at Cuppa Tahoe in South Lake Tahoe, California (2054 Lake Tahoe Blvd, South Lake Tahoe). Advance registration is required. $350 includes a manuscript evaluation (up to 10 pages). Each workshop is limited to 9 participants. Please visit Suzanne’s author website for more information: https://www.suzanneroberts.net/workshops.html

Suzanne Roberts’s newest book, Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties, explores the link between death and desire and what it means to accept our own animal natures, the parts we most often hide, deny, or consider only with shame—our taboo desires and our grief. In landscapes as diverse as the Salamanca’s cobbled streets, the Mekong River’s floating markets, Fire Island’s windswept beaches, Nashville’s honky-tonks, and the Sierra Nevada’s snowy slopes, Roberts interrogates her memory and tries to make sense of her own private losses (deaths of people and relationships), as well as more public losses, including a mass shooting in her hometown, environmental devastation in the Amazon rainforest, and wildfire evacuations. With lyricism, insight, honesty, and dark humor, these essays illuminate the sometimes terrible beauty of what it means to be human, deepening the conversation on death and grief, sexuality, and the shame that comes from surviving the world in a female body with all of its complexities.

Suzanne Roberts’ other books include Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel (Gold Medal Winner for Best Travel Book in 2020 from the Independent Publisher’s Book Awards and Bronze Prize Winner for Best Travel Book from the North American Travel Journalists Association), the memoir Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award) and four collections of poetry.

Named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic’s Traveler magazine, Roberts’ work has appeared in many anthologies and journals, including Best Women’s Travel Writing, the New York Times, CNN, Creative Nonfiction, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in Literature and the Environment from the University of Nevada-Reno, teaches for the low residency MFA in Creative Writing at UNR-Tahoe, and lives in South Lake Tahoe, CA.

CONTACT INFO: https://www.suzanneroberts.net/contact.html