Come and join us for much more wisdom, adventure and fascinating discussion and reading material in three more masterclasses on autofiction hosted by the brilliant Susanna Crossman throughout May, June and July. Susanna is an award-winning writer of fiction and nonfiction, and an expert in all things autofiction. Here’s what you can expect:
The first of the series takes us further from where we left off in the Evening Lab by digging deeper into an introduction to autofiction - Autofiction Introduction, with Susanna Crossman, 21st May, 6-8pm
Many people don’t know when they are using their own life as material whether or not they are writing autofiction. But for Serge Doubrovsky, autofiction is a hybrid of fiction and autobiography: “Fiction of strictly real events or facts; the autofiction, if you like, of having entrusted the language of an adventure to the adventure of language.” In this online masterclass Susanna will be using the work of authors like Danté and Proust to Annie Ernaux via Rachel Cusk, Knausgaard and Sheila Heti to ask, what does autofiction actually mean? And, if you’re using your own life as your material, how do you know when you’re writing it?
Susanna will also be
unearthing the history of autofiction, examining its complexities and avant-garde vibe
experimenting with POV, voice, style and getting inventive
writing the self and the selves we make up.
We’ll also address questions of ethics and emotional truth.
In the second masterclass of the series, Autofiction, à la française, and writing autofiction as resistance, with Susanna Crossman,18th June, 6-8pm
Susanna will introduce you to the French writers who experimented with writing as resistance and untold stories: Camille Laurens, Constance Debré, Annie Ernaux and Edouard Louis. Many international writers, such as Sheila Heti and Sheena Patel, now employ the genre, as autofiction encourages resistance, opens the page to political subjects like motherhood, class, sexual violence, gender, sexuality and race.
In this session Susanna will introduce you to
French autofiction, it’s understated style coupled with a fluid approach incorporating elements of autobiography and sociology.
experiment with collective POV, social history, and dynamic hybrid forms.
The final workshop is Autofiction and breaking the rules, with Susanna Crossman,16th July, 6-8pm.
Looking at the most experimental forms of autofiction, such speculative, essayistic, sci-fi versions of the autobiographical story. Reading material will include Danté’s 14th-century narrative poem The Divine Comedy, State of Paradise by Laura van den Berg and Michelle de Kresner’s Theory and Practice, that she describes as a “hyperrealist novel, a novel that doesn’t read like a novel.”
In this masterclass you will be plunged into all the inventive forms auto-fiction can take, involving a story that we could imagine happening to ourselves that we can tell by subverting many literary forms.
Autofiction combination ticket. Buy a ticket for all three masterclasses at an overall discount.
All these masterclasses are interactive and combine:
Short recap of the history and definition of autofiction and breaking the autobiographical pact.
Exploring and understanding: Inventive and speculative forms of autofiction from Danté, Duras to Van den Berg, via Woolf and Kresner.
Experimenting with speculative techniques to move from real life to autofiction:Imagining what if? Establishing which truth I need to tell.
Using generative autofiction writing exercises with hybrid forms: including fiction, essays, poetry, found language and sci-fiction within our autofiction texts.
Discussing handling vulnerability, ethics, permission and truth
A Q & A.
We’ll be giving ourselves the permission to experiment with form, with intention, care, and artistic freedom. The session will provide a supportive, rigorous space. This course is open to beginners and experienced writers, poets, essayists, novelists, and short story writers who want to discover autofiction.
Other courses open for booking
Julia Bell masterclass series, Between the Lines, in celebration of her newly published book of the same name.
Julia Bell is one of the UK’s best creative writing teachers, with decades of experience. Her next book, Between the Lines: Life Lessons from the Creative Writing Workshop is published (Simon & Schuster) this week, whose premise will form this series of London Lit Lab workshops.
The sessions start with our next Between the Lines Evening Lab, on Tuesday 19th May, 6pm BST which will be discussing the meaning of creative writing in a world that is overwhelmed by technology and generated text. This is an essential hour lecture from one of our leading thinkers in creative writing.
As with all our Evening Labs, you don’t have to be a paid subscriber to book but you get a 50% discount if you are.
This is followed by three masterclasses run by Julia Bell, from the importance of ‘paying attention’, to ‘finding your voice’, to the ‘community of the workshop’. Details below.
Between the Lines: Paying Attention, 23rd May, 11am – 1pm. Explore attention as the foundational creative skill, and the quality of noticing that underpins good writing.
Between the Lines: Finding your Voice, 30th May, 11am – 1pm. Locate and develop your instinctive register through practice, specificity and courage.
Between the Lines: The Workshop as Community, 20th June, 11am – 1pm. Explore how to give feedback generously and usefully, workshopping work in progress.
Between the Lines combination ticket
Memoir Bootcamp: Get Submission Ready with Lily Dunn, starts 14th September and runs for 14 weeks. Application only. Only a few spots left for this so do get in touch
Writing Our Way Back: Masterclass in Therapeutic Writing with Katie Watson, 26th September, 3-5.30pm.
