Fictional Strategies Essential to the Memoirist
Sands Hall
Memoirist, Novelist, Essayist, Playwright, Writing Craft Teacher
Squaw Valley Community of Writers & Franklin & Marshall College
Sands Hall is known for her fiction, but several years ago she found herself pulled to begin writing about a decade of her life that she’d pretended never happened. The result was her memoir, FLUNK. START. Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint), which Library Journal describes as being “as gripping as any thriller as well as searching and insightful”; and which author Karen Bender describes as “transcendent,” calling it “a triumph, a work of great honesty and insight… a necessary book for our time.”
As Sands worked on her memoir, she realized that she was relying on tools she’d honed while working on fiction, and in her talk for the California Writers Club Sacramento, she’ll discuss a few of these, including ideas about plot and structure, POV (yes! even a memoirist must make decisions about point of view), and that essential aspect of any story, imagined or real: Scene. In her talk, Sands will specifically address how to effectively build scenes that are rooted in memory. Whether you’re working on fiction or a memoir, you will learn a lot from this energetic and knowledgeable writer and teacher.
Takeaways:
- Fictional Tools to Hone for Memoir
- Ideas on plot, structure, point of view
- Scene-building rooted in memory
About the speaker:
Sands Hall’s recent memoir is FLUNK. START. Reclaiming My Decade Lost in Scientology (Counterpoint). She is also the author of the novel Catching Heaven (Ballantine), a WILLA Award Finalist for Best Contemporary Fiction, and a Random House Reader’s Circle selection; and of a book of essays and writing exercises, Tools of the Writers Craft. Her short fiction has appeared in such journals as Iowa Review, Green Mountains Review, and New England Review. She teaches for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival and for the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, and is an associate teaching professor at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Sands is also a theater artist: actor, director, and playwright—her play Fair Use explores the controversy surrounding Wallace Stegner’s use of the journals and letters of 19th century writer and illustrator Mary Hallock Foote in creating his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Angle of Repose. Also a singer/songwriter, Sands’s CD is called Rustler’s Moon. She lives in Nevada City, California.
11 AM–1:00 PM
Pre-session: 10:15 Talk & Share – Great First Paragraphs (any genre), with Emily Boyd
Post-session: 1:15-2:15 Writing Your Page-Turning Memoir, with Dorothy Rice
$25 Non-Members
$15 Members (40% discount)
Lunch included with meeting. Price includes pre- and post-sessions.
Click here for pre-payment by credit card. Please bring your printed receipt with you.*
Cattlemens Restaurant
12409 Folsom Blvd
Rancho Cordova, CA 95670
* Ticket good only for the luncheon immediately following the date on the receipt.
Luncheon Information
- Monthly Luncheons are open to the public
- Cost is $15 for members, $25 for nonmembers
- The meeting fee includes speaker, lunch and beverage
- Cattlemens Restaurant, 12409 Folsom Blvd., Rancho Cordova, CA
The restaurant is located just east of Hazel Ave. at the northeast end of the Nimbus Winery complex along Highway 50. Cattlemens offers CWC a spacious meeting room with free WiFi, quality AV equipment, free off street parking and excellent food.