March 19, 2024

The Evolution of Memoir (March 4-25, 2024)

Brooke and Linda Joy have been teaching memoir together for nearly 13 years, and have their finger on the pulse of the genre's best-sellers, trends, and its evolution. This spring, starting on March 4, you're invited to The Evolution of Memoir, a four-week journey that explores new trends, craft choices and techniques, and exciting writing choices memoirists make that offers you, dear writers, evermore freedom as you find your way to your story's form and how your memoir wants to be told.


Join us for these 4 weeks of exploration:

Week 1 (March 4): Elevating the Form
Week 2 (March 11): Breaking the Time-Space Continuum
Week 3 (March 18): New and Evolving Techniques
Week 4 (March 25): The Meaning Below the Meaning Below the Meaning

The Evolution of Memoir offers a reading list of 6 memoirs that are breaking new ground in the genre and we invite you to join us for a Reading Group add-on if you'd like to continue past the first 4 weeks.

Click here to see all the details
$299 for The Evolution of Memoir
$399 for The Evolution of Memoir + Reading Group

Join Us Starting March 4th!



The Journey of Writing Memoir Starts with You

Our January-June course is now full. If you'd like to be on the waitlist, or on our "interested student" list for June-December 2024, please email Brooke.

goals for new year

When you decide to write a memoir, you begin a journey into the heart of who you are. You draw upon memories, desires, imagination, and writing techniques to paint a picture of your life, or a portion of your life. You start down the long and winding path toward becoming a writer, and eventually a published author. Published author—yes! This is the goal of most memoir writers. You may want to learn from your story, or even settle some old scores (internally and externally), but mostly, as a memoirist, you want to share your wisdom and your story—if only you can get it done! That is the challenge.

As coaches and writers ourselves, we know that good, consistent writing emerges and blossoms with structure, accountability, and encouragement. These are the cornerstones of Write Your Memoir in Six Months. You and a cohort of eleven other memoirists will embark upon a journey together that will culminate in the book you’ve been wanting, needing, and longing to write. We treat the process of writing a memoir like the journey it is. You will encounter three stages—the excitement of getting started; the muddy middle where you may encounter a few snarls and saboteurs; and the long-range view to the end, when you’re weaving all the pieces together and the finish line is in sight.

Here are the five things we believe any memoirist needs for this journey:

Consistency—your body in front of the computer regularly (daily for a short time is ideal).
Accountability—someone who’s expecting you to deliver on what you want for yourself.
Goals—when you have goals, you’ll know when you reach them.
Guts—the sheer determination to write and write, consult, edit, rethink, and write some more.
Patience—it takes time to write a book. But you only can do it one sentence at a time.

We are two passionate memoir advocates who have coached hundreds of authors through the completion of their manuscripts and all the way to publication. In this course, you’ll be met with support each step of the way—getting your fill of craft and technique, as well as the necessary emotional support that a journey like this requires.