Here’s What Matters: Starting a Memoir

with Jack Ridl
June 6, 10:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m.
Tuition: $150
Materials Fee: N/A

Participants will spend the day exploring, through their preferred form of writing, the things that have profoundly impacted their own lives—whether funny, traumatic, serious, sorrowful, or joyous—and turning these stories into the beginnings of a memoir. Using suggestions provided by the instructor, writers will first talk with one another about the subject they have chosen; they will then have time to explore that choice in writing, after which the group will engage in a delightful debriefing about what showed up as they wrote, marking the culmination of a deeply memorable day.

Plan to bring: writing utensils and paper or notebook and memorable tokens from your life that may inspire writing.

Photo by Nolan Zunk, Summer Fellow 2025

Jack Ridl (he/him), Poet Laureate of Douglas, Michigan, is the author of books including All at Once and Saint Peter and the Goldfinch. His work has been recognized by the Foreword Reviews Gold Award for Poetry, the Society of Midland Authors Poetry Award, the Center for Book Arts chapbook award, and selection as best sports book of the year by the Institute for International Sport. Individual poems have been published in the Georgia Review, Poetry, Colorado Review, Rattle, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, Field, Poetry East, and elsewhere. Students at Hope College named him both Outstanding Professor and Favorite Professor, and in 1996, Carnegie Foundation/CASE named him Michigan Professor of the Year. More than 85 of his students have earned their MFAs, and over 100 are published; several have received first book awards. Every Thursday, he posts a monologue on YouTube as part of his video series The Sentimentalist.