WEBINAR | Mastering Braided Memoirs: How to Structure Multiple Dramatic Threads
August 26 @ 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm EDT
Learn the craft techniques that transform separate threads into a rich, seamless narrative that surprises, moves, and resonates with readers.
For memoir and nonfiction
Included in the Season Pass
The braided memoir has become one of the most exciting and sought-after forms in contemporary nonfiction—but weaving multiple narrative threads into a compelling whole requires far more than alternating between story lines. How can you transform fragments, obsessions, research, memory, and reflection into a unified work that delivers both emotional impact and a high level of reader engagement?
In this webinar, we explore the hidden architecture that makes braided memoirs resonate. Learn how to choose strands that deepen one another, create momentum across timelines, withhold and reveal information strategically, and build a deeply satisfying narrative arc from seemingly disparate materials.
Whether you’re simply curious about the form, beginning a braided essay or book-length project, or struggling to master the form, you’ll leave with new tools for creating a memoir with confidence and purpose, whose threads are stronger together than apart.
In this webinar, you will:
- IDENTIFY the three powerful reasons to use this exciting—but tricky—form
- SELECT themes that connect multiple narrative strands
- LEARN to MAP the movement between each narrative beat
- EXPLORE the braider’s triple threat: repetition, juxtaposition, and variation
- AVOID common pitfalls
- DISCOVER revision techniques that strengthen connections between strands
This webinar is ideal for writers who…
- are new memoirists needing a flexible, accessible way to begin
- want to deepen their structural and thematic control of memoir
- feel ready to break out of linear storytelling and try something more dynamic
- are struggling to connect disparate memories, themes, or materials into a cohesive narrative
- want to strengthen structure, control, and impact in their memoir
- seek to weave personal experience with research, reflection, or cultural context
- want to turn vivid fragments into a finished essay or book
Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER
Dr. Heather Sellers has been teaching for over thirty years, and she doesn’t teach like anyone else. Her classes are innovative and groundbreaking, and students describe them as fun, lively, and warm—the kind of workshop where you laugh out loud and walk away having learned an enormous amount.
She is the author of You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know, a popular memoir about family and face blindness. An Oprah Book-of-the-Month Club selection and Editor’s Choice at the New York Times Book Review, the award-winning book was featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Dick Gordon’s The Story, Dateline, The Today Show, and Good Morning America with George Stephanopoulos. Her essays appear in The New York Times, The Sun, Reader’s Digest, Good Housekeeping, The Best American Essays, and numerous journals and anthologies. She is the author of four books on the craft of writing, including The Practice of Creative Writing.
Her fifth collection of poetry, Women in Tampa Talking About Alligators, is just out from Lynx House Press. Currently, she is a member of the MFA faculty at the University of South Florida, where she won the university’s highest teaching award. She also offers in-person workshops and private lessons for writers at all levels.
REFUNDS (less a $10 processing fee) ARE AVAILABLE before the replay is sent out. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.
There are no refunds after the replay is sent.
Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com
