Faculty Profile
Sharon O'Brien
Adjunct Faculty in Creative Writing (2021)
Contact Information
East College Room 306
717-245-1497
Education
- B.A
- Radcliffe College, 1967
- Ph.D., Harvard University, 1975
2024-2025 Academic Year
Spring 2025
CRWR 219 Creative Writing: Memoir/Essay
In this course, we will learn how to transform life into art by taking what may seem "personal" materials - the experiences of a life, or lives - and shaping them aesthetically into narrative. "Everyone has a story that only they can tell," writer Susan Monsky once said, and this is particularly relevant in a course that focuses on memoir and personal essay. Equally true is the fact that not everyone can tell her or his story well or effectively, in a way that will engage readers. The challenge of memoir is to draw on the raw material of life and transform it into art by finding the story that emerges and creating a narrative voice to tell that story. In this course we will both encourage the emergence of writers' individual voices and work on the literary techniques (many of which are shared with fiction writers) that make memoir (and personal essay) a literary genre.We will be reading examples of memoir and personal essay; the heart of the course, however, is the workshop, where we will discuss each other's writing and give suggestions for revision. Classes will include discussions of the reading, freewriting, and workshopping of student papers.