Reflect & Contemplate: Techniques for Personal Essay & Memoir

with award-winning author Sherri Mandell

Thursday, September 6, 2018, 10:30 – 14:30

The high holidays are the time when we are called to reflect upon our lives. It’s fitting then to study the personal essay and memoir because what often distinguishes them is the quality of reflection. In this workshop, you will practice simple techniques that enhance contemplation in your writing so that your essays become richer and more textured.

As Phillip Lopate writes, “In any autobiographical narrative… the heart of the matter often shines through those passages where the writer analyzes the meaning of his or her experience. The quality of thinking, the depth of insight and the willingness to wrest as much understanding as the writer is humanly capable of arriving at—these are guarantees to the reader that a particular author’s sensibility is trustworthy and simpatico.”

Along with deepening reflection in the story you are telling, you will make space for speculation, imagination, association, interpretation, deeper insights and understanding.

Details: advance payment required of 390nis (drinks and kosher vegetarian lunch included); non-refundable if you cancel within one week of the workshop and your place cannot be filled.

Sherri Mandell won a National Jewish Book Award in 2004 for her spiritual memoir, The Blessing of a Broken Heart (Toby Press, 2003). She is also the author of The Road to Resilience: From Chaos to Celebration (Toby Press, 2016) and two children’s picture books forthcoming from Kar-Ben Copies. She received Moment Magazine’s prize for best short fiction in 2009 and a Simon Rockower prize for personal essay in 2011. She teaches memoir and essay writing in Jerusalem.