Writing Family Narratives Using Research (Brendan Wolfe)

This class will meet in person at WriterHouse for 8 sessions on Tuesdays from 1:00 PM-3:30 PM, September 16 through November 4th.

Description:

This class is part genealogy seminar, part traditional nonfiction workshop. We’ll focus on integrating storytelling with research in ways that make it impossible to separate one from the other. In the process you will learn some basic family history–research skills and then see how what you uncover can not only deepen your storytelling but guide it as well.

Come to class with one or more projects in mind. Be thinking about what story you are trying to tell and how research might help. What questions do you have that it might answer? You might be interested in writing a memoir about you and your immediate family, or investigating something further back in time. The title of this class notwithstanding, you’re also welcome to pursue a story outside of your family but that you nevertheless find yourself drawn to.

We will read and discuss published examples, present our research, and then workshop drafts of our narratives.

About the Instructor:

Brendan Wolfe is a professional genealogist and the author of three books, including Finding Bix: The Life and Afterlife of a Jazz Legend and Wolfe’s History. His personal essays and reviews have been published in Colorado Review, The Morning News, VQR, and Mud Season Review, among others. For twelve years Wolfe edited Encyclopedia Virginia, and has written numerous historical essays, including “The Train at Wood’s Crossing.” Honored as the best historical narrative of 2019 by Bunk magazine, it is included in Lynching in Virginia: Racial Terror and Its Legacy, edited by Gianluca De Fazio and published by the University of Virginia Press in August. Wolfe lives in Charlottesville with his daughter, Beatrix.