In 2005, Jeanette Walls authored an incredibly complex memoir with a truly unique and conscious invitation: despite the shocking circumstances and traumatic horrors so candidly shared, she makes room for the reader to weigh and decide how they feel about her story. There’s something to the way she weaves her truth that allows for the full weight of her alcoholic, paranoid father, her unhinged and selfish mother, the poverty, neglect, and abuse Jeanette carried alongside her siblings to be truly witnessed without being absorbed.

That is a mark of a skilled storyteller. And that is what we are going to study in July’s Writers’ Society class.

In the first half of this class, we’ll be learning about Jeanette’s life and what forged her as a writer. This gives us a clearer window into the writer’s work and the Inner Territory that has helped it shapeshift. All good storytellers have included parts of Self in everything they’ve created, and, in this case, Jeanette has laid a wide variety of vulnerable parts on the table.

In the second half of class, we will work from prompts and follow the maplines left for us in The Glass Castle. We’ll begin a practice of telling the whole truth while leaving room for the reader to breathe around our sharp edges. We’ll attempt to introduce new elements into our creativity, weaving unique Inner Territory elements as we go.

Saturday, July 26 at 11 am PST