Submitted by Whatcom Community College
Northwest author couple, and Chuckanut Writers Conference alumni, Claire Dederer and Bruce Barcott will be teaching two new Chuckanut Writers classes this spring for Whatcom Community College’s Community and Continuing Education program.
New York Times bestselling memoirist Dederer, author of “Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses,” offers a hands-on, fun, rigorous class with Choosing the Focus for Your Memoir, 4:00–6:30 p.m. Thursday, April 23. “If you tell your whole story, you’re writing an autobiography, and autobiographies are for famous people,” Dederer says. “We are, well, the ordinary, and we must choose how to narrow the focus of our story.”
Great nonfiction relies on characters and dialogue in scene. Sometimes those scenes are ten-page epics. Sometimes they’re captured in three lines. In any event, things must happen to people. Examine these and other observational strategies and writing techniques designed to bring nonfiction stories alive in the reader’s mind with Barcott’s Capturing the Nonfiction Scene, noon–2:30 p.m. Friday, April 24. Barcott is a contributor to Outside and The New York Times Magazine.
Both classes are $39 each and will be held in the Village Books Readings Gallery. For more information and to register, call 360-383-3200 or visit whatcomcommunityed.com.
