Taught by Dani Shapiro, bestselling memoirist and novelist chosen by Ariana Huffington to appear at the THRIVE conference

Often our lives feel like one random event happening after another, and we long to create a shape, a narrative that makes sense of things. This is why we tell stories, after all—whether they’re stories we tell a new friend over a cup of coffee or stories we tell ourselves in the light of retrospect or hindsight. But when we attempt to write memoir, what we are doing is more than shaping our stories to our own satisfaction, we are also shaping our stories so that they will make a larger sense, a universal sense. So that they may reach across time and space and reach a reader who, though she may not have lived the same circumstances, will have that profound feeling of identification and connection. Through a powerful series of exercises and the inspiration and encouragement that Dani Shapiro is widely-known for, students in this course will come away with a sense of direction and clarity about their work—and even their lives.