- $115
Editing Memoir
- Course
Understand what makes this genre tick. Learn how to help memoir writers shape stronger stories.
True stories have the power to connect us with the lives of others—and these deeply personal, yet universal stories provide us with a way of seeing the world through a new lens.
But finding and crafting that story in way that’s compelling to others is challenging for even the best of writers. As editors, understanding both those challenges and what their stories need can help you better help them.
This self-paced course will help you better understand memoir and its readers' expectations. It will give you tools and techniques to help you figure out what a specific manuscript needs, and how you can address those needs to make it even more compelling to its readers.
(Oh, and there will be dinosaurs, of course 🦖🦕)
A needs-based scholarship of $40-off is available for editors from marginalized groups who cannot afford the full price. A limited number of scholarship spots are released in October and April.
Contents
Module 1: What Makes a Memoir
Module 2: All the Expectations
Module 3: Finding and Refining Story and Structure
Module 4: Reflecting the Experience in Prose and More
Course Wrap-Up
Hi, I’m Tanya 👋🏻
I’m a book editor, translator, educator, and literary omnivore. I've been in publishing for over twenty years and love this industry to bits.
I work with authors and publishers, editing and translating SFF, horror, contemporary realism, memoir, interactive fiction, and graphic novels.
I support editors and writers one on one, and teach in a bunch of places, including the Editorial Freelancers Association and Emerson College's MFA in Popular Fiction program.
It has been suggested that I read too much for my own good. This might be true.
What Others Have to Say
"This course gave me a lot more tools for working with memoirists. I came away with a lot more questions to apply to manuscripts and frameworks for understanding how the genre works – highly recommend!"
Kristen Tate
Louise Lubke Cuss
Kristen Tatroe
"Not only did Tanya make an immediate improvement in my editing techniques for memoir authors, but Tanya pushed my limits with the hands-on exercises."
Susan Griggs
FAQ
How long should I expect to spend on the course?
You can expect to spend about an hour in each module to go through the materials and complete the assignments.
What if I want some one-on-one support during the course? Can I get that?
Absolutely! You can find a link in the course where you can purchase some one-on-one time with me.
I need accessibility accommodations. Can you help?
I've done my best to meet standard accessibility accommodations in this workshop. All the videos have captions and transcripts. All narratives are available in both Word and PDF formats. Images have alt text where possible and descriptions where there isn't a place to enter alt text in the system.
If you need any additional accessibility accommodations, shoot me an email and I'll see what I can do to help.
What do you mean by "marginalized" in the scholarship?
People from marginalized groups and communities are people who have experienced systematic discrimination because of certain characteristics — such as their skin color, heritage, sexuality, gender, disability, or neurodivergence. This scholarship is intended to support people who have been historically excluded from the publishing industry.