Through the Lens: Scope and Point-of-View in Memoir led by Sanjna N. Singh
This three-day memoir intensive workshop explores how shifts in distance and perspective determine a memoir’s tone and voice. What narrative choices will help get the story out onto the page? Should one start from the point of view of a child, as Mary Karr did in her seminal memoir The Liar’s Club? Or tell the story through the lens of a crucial relationship that defined a life, as Arundhati Roy did in Mother Mary Comes to Me? How about from the perspective of a life-defining diagnosis, such as Lucy Greeley’s excellent Autobiography of a Face? Through close readings of memoir excerpts, we will examine concepts like narrative distance, timeline and scope to see how writers compress and expand parts of their story to reach an emotional truth. Through generative writing, as well as rewriting scenes, we will test how using different points of view transforms the tone, voice and meaning of the scene. By the end of the workshop, writers will have a clearer sense of the different narrative positions they can choose from to best shape their material, and with practical tools for getting their story written. This workshop is open to writers of all levels and will include time for participants to share what they’ve created if they choose to.
12-15 participants max
SELECTION CRITERIA
The workshops are open to writers of all genres and levels. Writers who wish to apply may answer the following questions in 3-4 lines each (max.)
1. How does your writing currently fit into your life?
2. What are you working on at the moment (if anything)?
3. What do you hope to discover while participating in this workshop?
About facilitater: www.sanjnasingh.com
Born in Mumbai, Sanjna N. Singh moved to the U.S. for college, graduating from Bryn Mawr with degrees in Political Science and French. She studied cinema and photography in Paris and subsequently worked for five years at HBO in New York. Her independent documentary “Out of Status” was nominated for the Amnesty DOEN award for Human Rights and aired on Channel 4, UK. Sanjna has worked on shows like Storm Chasers and Dual Survival for the Discovery Channel, Mob Wives for Vh1, Hotel Impossible for the Travel Channel, Be Good Johnny Weir for Logo, and many others. Her essays have been published in the New York Times, the Guardian, Guernica, Bitch, Tricycle and other magazines and she was awarded numerous grants and residencies including an award from the Speculative Literature Foundation for fiction in 2021. Sanjna graduated with her MFA from the University of Iowa’s celebrated Nonfiction Writing Program in 2022, where she was also a screenwriting fellow. She currently lives in India with her little rescue terrier, KoKo.
Please note- “attendance in all sessions is mandatory.”
For queries, registration & accommodation, please email: info@deerpark.in