Jem Poster and Sarah Burton

Everyone has stories to tell about themselves, and if you’ve ever thought about writing down your own life-story, or any part of it, you’ve probably wondered how best to approach your task; or you may have begun the task and found it more challenging than you had anticipated. Whether you imagine writing only for friends and family or for a wider readership, this one-day course will help you to rediscover and shape your own personal life story.

The course can be taken alone or with the following day’s Imagined Selves: An Approach to Fiction-writing.

Designed by two professional writers with long experience of teaching creative writing at university level, the course will address the writer’s art and craft in ways both practical and thought-provoking, involving both writing and the discussion of writing. The focus will be primarily on life-writing, but writers of fiction are likely to gain useful insights from the event.

The course has been devised with a group of 30 in mind. However, the presence of two tutors means that, apart from a short period at the beginning of the course and another at the end, the teaching will take place in groups of 15. Each group will have two sessions with each tutor.

The sessions

9.30-11.00: Session 1: Introduction/the groundwork
11.00-11.30: Coffee
11.30-1.00: Session 2: Shaping our stories
1.00-2.00: Lunch
2.00-3.30: Session 3: Themes and meaning
3.30 - 4.00: Tea
4.00 - 5.30: Session 4: The importance of others/Drawing it all together

Session 1: Introduction/the groundwork
Why write about ourselves? Thinking about our readership. The value of ‘ordinary’ life experience. The course is run on the assumption that participants will want to shape their narrative, rather than simply jotting down random memories – preliminary thoughts about this.

Session 2: Shaping our stories
Practical work followed by discussion. How do we build and sustain interest in our narratives? Where does our story begin? How much context might we need? Selection: omission and inclusion.

Session 3: Themes and meaning
What kind of balance are we looking for between the events of our lives (the plot) and the meaning of those events? Can we discern patterns that might help with the shaping of our stories? Preliminary thoughts about the importance of others in our lives.

Session 4: The importance of others/Drawing it all together
Practical work followed by discussion. General overview of ways of incorporating in our writing the insights we’ve gained during the course.

The tutors
Jem Poster is emeritus professor of creative writing, Aberystwyth University. He is the author of a collection of poetry, Brought to Light, and two novels, Courting Shadows and Rifling Paradise. Sarah Burton, founder and former director of Cambridge University’s MSt in creative writing, is the author of non-fiction works, Impostors and A Double Life: A Biography of Charles and Mary Lamb, and a novel, The Strange Adventures of H. Together, they are co-authors of a handbook for fiction writers, The Book You Need to Read to Write the Book You Want to Write and a recently published companion book of writing exercises, The Prompts You Need to Help You Write the Book You Want to Write. Their co-written historical crime novel, Eliza Mace, was published in 2024.