WY071 Writing Your First Novel: Autofiction (Fictional Autobiography) (6 sessions)

Have you ever considered putting your past down on paper? Gretel Furner’s new course explores how to write ‘autofiction’ or autobiographical fiction, a form of writing that goes beyond memoir and the borders of the known to something deeper. By using invented dialogue and details, a writer can often free up his or her remembered life and penetrate to a ‘greater truth’. We will talk about what this genre is, look at examples by authors from Marcel Proust to Carl Owe Knausgaard, and then start writing, editing and discussing students’ own efforts at writing in the same genre.

About the Instructor: Gretel Furner is one of our most popular instructors. She grew up in England and was educated at Oxford University. She obtained a PhD in the modern novel at the University of the Saarland, Germany. Gretel has been Associate Professor at George Washington University, and instructor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She lives between London and Paris, and since 2003 has been an instructor at WICE in French Literature and History, the Migrant Soul series and Creative Writing.