Deadline for Memoir Writing Course at Twain is Today

Today is the deadline to sign up for “Writing at the Mark Twain House,” an eight-week memoir course taught by distinguished authors Lary Bloom and Suzanne Levine.

The course, to be held in the classroom in the Museum Center, will run on Wednesday evenings in March and April. The course will explore aspects of the memoir craft as scene-setting, dialogue, character development and narrative. A memoir project will be part of the program. Accomplished memoirists including Wally Lamb, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith and Cindy Brown Austin will participate in individual sessions.

Lary Bloom needs little introduction to Connecticut readers: As the editor of the Hartford Courant’s Northeast magazine for twenty years he nurtured new talents such as Wally Lamb, David Hays and Cindy Brown Austin. He is a contributing writer at Connecticut Magazine, where his work has won two national awards, and has written a regular column in The New York Times. He is author of the classic text "The Writer Within," a book used in the course, and, most recently, collaborated with former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge on his controversial memoir "The Test of Our Times." He also wrote, with Senator Christopher J. Dodd, "Letters from Nuremberg," and is on the faculty of Fairfield University's MFA writing program.

Suzanne Levine, a poet with finely developed skills in prose as well, is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, "Haberdasher’s Daughter" (Antrim House). She has published in the journals Interpoezia, Permafrost, Artemis, California Quarterly, Helicon Nine, Passages North, Quiddity Literary Journal, The Trinity Review, Tendril, The Bellingham Review, Forty Fathers, Southern California Review and Calliope. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize three times.

There is a fee of $600 for the eight-week course. To participate, a serious interest in the memoir form is the only requirement; beginners are welcome. To register, please send a brief letter or email of interest to Steve Courtney at steve.courtney@marktwainhouse.com.