Accessing Memoir Through Food, with Sarah Earle
“So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it.” -M.F.K. Fisher
Of all the five senses, taste has a particularly powerful ability to both conjure memory and unite our lived experiences. The fragrance of frying garlic, the yeasty warmth of fresh bread, the bite of chili sauce or the juicy pulp of a Christmas orange – not only can taste memory bring us back, but it can be a door to that which is left unexplored. Writer Natalie Eve Garrett, editor of Eat Joy, writes “Food can be such a lovely way into the heart of a story.” In this half-day workshop, we’ll read and discuss short personal essays with food at their center, as well as dive into writing exercises that use food memories as a conduit for the love, disappointment, grief or joy that lie deeper.
Saturday, May 29, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. EST ($75)
Sarah Earle is a lecturer at the University of New Hampshire, where she teaches first-year composition and a variety of English as a Second Language classes. She has also taught Creative Nonfiction at St. Paul’s Academic Summer Program in Concord, NH. She holds her MFA in nonfiction writing from UNH; you can read her essays in Bayou Magazine and The Cobalt Review, and her stories in The Rumpus and The Carolina Quarterly.
