WEBINAR | Poetry, Prose, or Both? Writing and Publishing a Hybrid Memoir
June 24 @ 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm EDT
Crossing genres can be an obstacle—or a selling point. Explore the craft of writing and the art of pitching a memoir that wants both poetry and prose.
For Creative Nonfiction, Poetry, and Hybrid
Sometimes a moment demands the compression of a poem. Sometimes it needs room to breathe in prose. But what happens when your memoir wants both? In this webinar, we’ll explore the craft of hybrid memoir—how to recognize when a piece is calling for verse versus essay, how to let both forms coexist without flattening or repeating yourself, and how each genre can do work the other can’t.
We’ll also tackle the practical challenges of bringing hybrid and multi-genre work to publication: how to structure the manuscript, how to describe it in a query, how to find receptive publishers, and how to talk about your book when it defies easy categorization.
Drawing from Brenda’s experience writing and placing Love You, Bye: A Daughter’s Journey in Essays and Poems (Skinner House Books, April 2026), she’ll share both the creative and publishing lessons learned along the way.
In this webinar, you will:
- LEARN to recognize when a moment, image, or memory wants to be a poem or an essay
- GAIN permission to try different forms and genres for the same material
- DISCOVER strategies for letting poetry and prose speak to each other without redundancy
- EXPLORE organizing principles for a hybrid manuscript
- PRACTICE language for describing multi-genre work to agents, editors, and readers
- IDENTIFY which presses are most open to unconventional memoir forms
This webinar is for…
- writers who enjoy the freedom to explore more than one genre at once (and want to feel better about it!)
- anyone who has wondered: “Is this a poem or is this an essay?”—and suspected the answer might be “yes”
- writers working on a book that feels like “essays” and “memoir” and “maybe poetry” all at once
- anyone who has been told their manuscript is “hard to categorize” or “difficult to shelve”
- those preparing to query or submit a multi-genre project and unsure how to describe it
Closed captioning is available. ✔
All registrants receive the recording. ✔
ABOUT YOUR PRESENTER
Brenda Miller is noted for making form “feel like a gift, not a constraint” and teaches as “a wise friend who’s read everything and still gets excited about a well-placed line break.” Warm, practical, and full of “what ifs,” Brenda’s sessions are full of the mutual joy of discovery.
Brenda is the author of six essay collections, most recently A Braided Heart: Essays on Writing and Form. Her collaborative collection with Julie Marie Wade, Telephone: Essays in Two Voices, won the Cleveland State University Press Nonfiction Book Award and was published in 2021. She received the Floating Bridge Press Chapbook Award for her poetry book The Daughters of Elderly Women and the Washington State Book Award for her memoir An Earlier Life. She also co-authored Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining, and Publishing Creative Nonfiction with Suzanne Paola and The Pen and the Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World with Holly Hughes. Her work has received six Pushcart Prizes. She is a Professor of English at Western Washington University, and associate faculty at the Rainier Writing Workshop.
Questions? Please email Info@writingcraft.com
Before the replay is sent, you may request a refund less a $10.00 processing fee. For a refund, EMAIL us at info@WritingCraft.com. Canceling your Zoom invite will not initiate this process.
