Finish Your Memoir in 2025: an extended program with Kris Kneen
Are you ready to accept the challenge and prioritise your own work for a change? Or are you a writer with experience in another form who is looking to tell their own story? Commit to your memoir and make 2025 your year to get it done!
Dates: 6pm-8pm commencing on Tuesday* 4 March, and concluding Tuesday 2 December. Please look at details below for a list of all class dates.
Fees: $2950 or $2850 for Varuna alumni. Payment terms are negotiable if you cannot pay the whole fee upfront.
Applications close: 5pm (AEDT) Tuesday 28 January 2025
Places: 8 participants will be selected
*Please note that we may be able to offer two cohorts, and if so, the second program will run on Monday evenings in the same weeks as the classes below. You will be asked your availability in the application form.
“It was wonderful to have this Memoir Masterclass over a whole year so we could work on our projects. Kris was a great facilitator: encouraging, supportive and insightful. Thank you.”
In this nine-month online workshop series Kris Kneen will lead a small group of writers to work together with the aim of each writer finishing a draft of their memoir. Writers with an existing draft who wish to finish a complete redraft will also get a lot out of this program.
Examining your own unique writing process and putting in place support rails, this Varuna masterclass will look at different aspects of the memoir writing process, break everything into small, manageable blocks, and work towards setting deadlines and meeting those deadlines with the support of a cohort of writers at a similar stage of their writing process.
We will use the expertise within the group as well as the guidance of some of the greatest and most innovative memoir writers to examine your own work, find the cracks and rework the material until you are happy with the final result.
This is a small group program for 8 participants.
In this course participants will:
Examine your own writing practice and adjust your work plan to suit your personal style.
Meet and get to know other writers at a similar point in their memoir writing process who will become your writing cohort, your support crew and your cheer squad.
Keep regular personal deadlines to help you stay on track to finishing your memoir.
Find new ways to structure and think about your book, and break the work up into smaller, more manageable pieces.
Find a small section of your book to refine as a calling card – an essay, an extract or sample to test in the real world.
Look at alternative methods of telling a personal story. Is the voice of your book the right voice to use? Are there better styles that suit your story?
Explore the beginnings of great memoirs, what catches a reader’s attention and forces them to read on. Are there ways you can find a stronger beginning to your story. Is it a re-ordering or a unique new scene?
Examine your story in the wider context of the world unfolding around the personal events. Look at the microcosm and the macrocosm of your unique story.
Deep dive into character - are the people in your story the right characters for the book? Are you missing key members of your cast? Are you featuring people who do not need a voice in the story?
Save others from harm and explore ways of obscuring identities, using metaphor and fictional methods of presenting the real world. Enact an empathetic approach to writing about people who have had a negative impact on your own life.
Explore how much is too much? We will look at the line between sharing generously and over-sharing. What needs to be saved for your therapist and what needs to be shared with a reader?
Bring what is hidden into the light and examine the areas of your life you are avoiding in your story. Decide if you should be leaning in to that discomfort.
Troubleshoot and identify the problem/s with your book, finding ways to overcome them.
Dig deep by planning and executing a last big push towards a first draft.
Re-write by stepping back from your work and finding ways of rewriting the (not great) first draft.
Finish strong by exploring meaningful endings.
PROGRAM OUTLINE
Please note that we may be able to offer two cohorts, and if so, the second program will run on Monday evenings - see dates below.
SEMESTER 1
Tuesday 4 March
Class 1: Making a Plan
Tuesday 11 March
Class 2: How memoirs are structured
Tuesday 25 March
Class 3: Fiction vs Memoir
Tuesday 8 April
Class 4: Hybrid and alternative structures
Tuesday 22 April
Class 5: The body is implicated
Tuesday 29 April
Class 6: How do we navigate time
Tuesday 27 May
Class 7: Casting and perspective - who tells the story
Tuesday 3 June
Class 8: What are you afraid of?
Tuesday 17 June
Class 9: Breaking it down into manageable pieces
Tuesday 1 July
Class 10: Microcosm - creating an excerpt for publication
Tuesday 8 July
Class 11: Check in and revising the plan
COURSE BREAK
SEMESTER 2
Tuesday 5 August
Class 12: The situation and the story
Tuesday 12 August
Class 13: Traps, tricks and pitfalls
Tuesday 26 August
Class 14: Sharing and oversharing
Tuesday 9 September
Class 15: There are no baddies
Tuesday 23 September
Class 16: What is it all about
Tuesday 7 October
Class 17: Killing your darlings
Tuesday 21 October
Class 18: Index card shuffle
Tuesday 11 November
Class 19: Workshopping
Tuesday 18 November
Class 20: Workshopping
Tuesday 25 November
Class 21: Workshopping
Tuesday 2 December
Class 22: Workshopping
Group 2 - Mondays
SEMESTER 1
Monday 3 March
Class 1: Making a Plan
Monday 17 March
Class 2: How memoirs are structured
Monday 24 March
Class 3: Fiction vs Memoir
Monday 7 April
Class 4: Hybrid and alternative structures
Monday 14 April
Class 5: The body is implicated
Monday 28 April
Class 6: How do we navigate time
Monday 26 May
Class 7: Casting and perspective - who tells the story
Monday 2 June
Class 8: What are you afraid of?
Monday 16 June
Class 9: Breaking it down into manageable pieces
Monday 30 June
Class 10: Microcosm - creating an excerpt for publication
Monday 7 July
Class 11: Check in and revising the plan
COURSE BREAK
SEMESTER 2
Monday 28 July
Class 12: The situation and the story
Monday 11 August
Class 13: Traps, tricks and pitfalls
Monday 25 August
Class 14: Sharing and oversharing
Monday 8 September
Class 15: There are no baddies
Monday 22 September
Class 16: What is it all about
Monday 13 October
Class 17: Killing your darlings
Monday 20 October
Class 18: Index card shuffle
Monday 10 November
Class 19: Workshopping
Monday 17 November
Class 20: Workshopping
Monday 24 November
Class 21: Workshopping
Monday 1 December
Class 22: Workshopping
ABOUT KRIS KNEEN
Kris Kneen is an experienced mentor and facilitator, as well as the award-winning author of memoir— Affection and The Three Burials of Lotty Kneen — and fiction: An Uncertain Grace, Steeplechase, Triptych, The Adventures of Holly White and the Incredible Sex Machine, Wintering, as well as the Thomas Shapcott Award-winning poetry collection Eating My Grandmother. They have written and directed broadcast documentaries for SBS and ABC Television. Their latest memoir is Fat Girl Dancing.
HOW TO APPLY
Entry to this course is by application. Writers will be selected based on the creative potential of their work, commitment to craft, openness to collaborating with peers and the balance in the group. If we receive enough strong applications we will offer the program in two cohorts and will curate each of the groups to maximise peer-to-peer connections, taking preferences into account where possible.
Course fees are $2950 or $2850 for Varuna alumni. Payment terms are negotiable if you cannot pay the whole fee upfront.
Applications close at 5pm on Tuesday 28 January 2025. All applicants will be notified of the outcome of their submission by 11 February.
Please refer to Varuna’s general submission guidelines for any questions on formatting your work.
Feel free to call 02 4782 5674 or email amy@varuna.com.au to discuss your application.
“Kris Kneen was a wonderful teacher and mentor, providing careful and compassionate feedback on our work in progress memoir pieces. They gently pushed us to consider different narrative structures, viewpoints and hybrid styles, which I will take with me into my future work.”
“The online memoir writing masterclass was one of the best learning and collaborative experiences I’ve had. Kris Kneen’s teaching drew us together and drew the best out of us. Our group of seven gelled and became a stimulating and supportive community. We read lots and we wrote lots and, by year’s end, had mostly pulled together a first draft of our memoir.”
UPCOMING COURSES, FELLOWSHIPS AND EVENTS
