August at the Memoir Club: PROGRAM CHANGE!!                  Tuesday  25 August 2014  6.00—9.00PM at Randwick Literary Institute 60 Clovelly Road, Randwick 2031 RSVP by 23 August: MemoirClubSydney@gmail.com Donation: $30/$25* (to cover teaching component)

Rosada’s delicious menu:  Chickpea curry. Spinach and potato curry with tomato, coconut and coriander. Brown rice and basmati rice. ($15, please book by texting: 0450 907 422)

News flash: Sadly, we have to postpone Rosie Scott’s session in August for personal reasons. We wish Rosie and family all the best and we’ll let you know asap the new date for her session. Instead, join our Memoir Club Writing Masterclass with  Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa

This masterclass was hugely successful when we ran it in 2014, helping participants to grapple with writing craft particular to memoir. Once again, you are invited to fire your writerly imagination and gather crafty writing advice with fabulous writing teachers Barbara Brooks and Alison Lyssa. The focus is on generating new writing - helping you get started on a project you have in mind - or delving into your own writing and memoir project. Not to be missed!

Alison and Barbara will introduce you to a page from the award-winning memoir H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, revealing the way she achieves, with unflinching honesty and intensity of emotion, a sense of momentum in brilliant descriptive writing.  Then some writing exercises to fire your imagination, stimulate memories and generate new writing. After a break and Rosada's delicious vegetarian meal, we’ll divide into small groups to discuss your writing exercises and insights.

For the writing exercises please bring:

• writing materials and
• your sense of adventure and your imagination  

(The extract from H is for Hawk that we'll talk about is from pp85-86 of the Vintage paperback; when you rsvp we'll send you scanned pages.) 

*PLEASE NOTE: the donation for the masterclass session this meeting will be $30, to cover the teaching component.

Barbara Brooks  is a writer & teacher of writing. She has taught at the University of Technology, Sydney & other universities, and runs her own Masterclasses in memoir & fiction – see her blog at http://bbwritinglife.blogspot.com.au/. She has published Leaving Queensland, & Eleanor Dark: a writer’s life. Her latest work, Verandahs, is memoir/fiction. To read published extracts, go to http://uts.academia.edu/BarbaraBrooks.

Alison Lyssa is a playwright, editor and writing mentor. She has published plays, poetry, short fiction & essays. She has mentored documentary film-makers at AFTRS, run community theatre projects, & taught Writing at UTS, UWS & Macquarie University. Her new play, Hurricane Eye was written as her doctorate in creative writing. Pinball, first performed at Sydney’s Nimrod Theatre in 1981, was revived for the 2015 Mardi Gras, to acclaim.

 

Randwick Literary Institute, 60 Clovelly Rd Randwick. Street parking available. Clovelly bus 339 on the doorstep. For how to get there, see: http://randwickliteraryinstitute.com.au/faqs/