Description
Stephen King writes, “A little talent is a nice thing to have if you want to be a writer, but the only real requirement is that ability to remember the story of every scar.” As a group, we will examine Harvard Psychologist Daniel Gilbert’s explanation of how memory actually works, and we’ll discuss how you can use this understanding to fill in the blind spots and tell the vivid, full-color stories of your scars and joys––as The Moth Storytelling proverb goes, “All ouch and no yay? Hard to make the listener stay.” We will focus on scene selection based on a premise, creating detailed scenes without muddling them with too much detail, and building one scene after another to construct a compelling narrative that keeps your readers engaged and your story moving forward.
About Eric Parker
Eric Parker spent his formative years as a sponsored skateboarder riding the streets of Fresno and San Francisco, where he first became interested in the country’s homeless population. He recently completed a creative nonfiction book about his friendship with a homeless poet (publication pending).
He earned his MFA from California State University, Fresno, where he served as an assistant editor for The Normal School: A Literary Magazine and studied nonfiction with Lillian Faderman, John Hales, Steven Church, and Lee Gutkind (UNO Spain 2006).
He has taught creative writing and literature at The University of Alabama since 2010, was the longtime co-director of the Pure Products Reading Series, and recently received the English Department’s Excellence in Teaching Instructor Faculty Award. His work can be read in Bull, Hobart, The Best of Boneshaker: A Bicycling Almanac, Anomalous Press, Anderbo, and more.
