Every memoir begins with a situation: an event, a relationship, a period of life that continues to exert its pull. But a situation alone is not yet a story.
The work of memoir is to discover the deeper emotional, psychological, or thematic question that gives experience its shape. As Vivian Gornick famously argues in The Situation and the Story, every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The writer’s task is not simply to recount what happened, but to discover the deeper emotional experience—the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has come to say.
This workshop is built around that distinction.
As a developmental editor and memoir teacher, I don’t read primarily to find problems or suggest improvements. I read to understand what a piece is trying to become. Beneath every draft is a story struggling to emerge. My role is to help writers recognize it, strengthen it, and build a narrative that fully realizes its possibilities.
Every work of literature has both a situation and a story. The situation is the context or circumstance, sometimes the plot; the story is the emotional experience that preoccupies the writer: the insight, the wisdom, the thing one has to say.
Vivian Gornick
Over seven Saturdays, we’ll develop a shared vocabulary for reading memoir by asking the same questions of every submission:
What is the situation?
What do you think the story is?
What is the narrator trying to understand?
Where does the story begin to emerge?
Where does the piece remain primarily within the situation?
These questions become more than a method of workshop discussion. They become a way of reading your own work with greater insight.
The workshop begins with a craft session introducing these ideas and establishing our approach to feedback. Over the following six weeks, eight writers will workshop memoir excerpts in alternating groups of four. Each participant submits three times during the course of the workshop. Every submission receives detailed editorial margin notes from me before workshop, along with in-depth discussion from the group.
Everyone attends every session. Reading closely, discussing thoughtfully, and learning from one another’s work are as central to the experience as having your own writing discussed.
Whether you’re just beginning to understand your material or deep into revision, this workshop is designed to help you become a more perceptive reader of your own work—and, ultimately, a stronger memoirist.
Registration opens August 17, 2026, and closes September 20, 2026, or when the workshop fills.
SV Bertrand 