Master Class: How to Find the Through-Line: Writing Memoir and Personal Essay with David McLoghlin
Master Class: How to Find the Through-Line: Writing Memoir and Personal Essay with David McLoghlin
2 Sessions: Saturday, October 4 + 11
11:00am-1:00pm ET
David McLoghlin
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet, and a writer of memoir and personal essay. His third book, Crash Centre (2024) was recently shortlisted for The Pigott Prize, and has been hailed by senior Irish poet Thomas McCarthy as “a work unquestionably triumphant with poetic victories.” With unusual, memoir-like power, it explores what happens when grooming, gaslighting and abuse masquerade as trust in the relationship between the author and a charismatic literary monk. He was awarded a Literature Bursary (grant) for memoir by Ireland’s Arts Council and has an immersive essay forthcoming in Golfer’s Journal, and personal essays have recently been published on Poetry Foundation’s website. His poems have been broadcast on WNYC’s Radioloab and anthologized on both sides of the Atlantic, most notably in Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment and Healing (Beacon Press, 2020).
In this practical masterclass you will learn to extract the story that you want to tell from the raw material of your life. The through-line is defined by the Merriam Webster Dictionary as “A common or consistent element or theme shared by items in a series or by parts of a whole.” In story, it’s the necklace that the pearls (sections, chapters, scenes, beats) are strung upon. Memoir or personal essay is not our autobiography, or whole life. Instead, it’s the exploration of a particular thread, or story, from your life. For example, in This Boy’s Life, Tobias Wolff writes about those years he spent with an abusive stepfather. His second memoir, In Pharoah’s Army, describes his time as a soldier in the Vietnam War. There is no crossover. There is in life, but in memoir or personal essay we keep material separate in order to better tell a specific story.
We’ll identify the subject of the through-line using examples from movies, fiction and nonfiction, and will discuss short extracts to help us identify it in the writing of others. We’ll use prompts and in-class writing exercises to refine the core threads that make up the through line in our own work, and will talk about theme (which is more abstract) vs throughline (which is very practical as the story’s central question). If you’re interested in writing your personal story by teasing out that central defining thread, or through-line, then this class is for you.
You'll gain greater clarity around:
identifying your key scenes and what unites them or links them together;
identifying and continually refining your projects's core or central question;
what your through-line is, and will be well on the way to learning what to leave out and what to include, as you'll be writing with your through-line in mind.
This class has 1 full scholarship and 2 half scholarships available. To apply for a scholarship, please fill out this form by TK.
David McLoghlin is a prize-winning poet and an exciting creative writing facilitator in memoir and poetry whose writing has been broadcast on WYNC’s Radiolab, appeared in film and published in journals of note on both sides of the Atlantic. His three books are Crash Centre (May 2024), Waiting for Saint Brendan and Other Poems (2012) and Santiago Sketches (2017), all with Salmon Poetry. In 2023 he was awarded a Patrick and Katherine Kavanagh Fellowship and was one of two poets to represent Ireland on the Versopolis European poetry platform. He won the Open category of the Voices of War International Poetry Competition in 2018 and was a finalist in the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize (now The Moth International Poetry Prize). His translation of Sign Tongue by Chilean poet Enrique Winter won the inaugural Good Morning Menagerie Chapbook-in-Translation Prize in 2014. In 2008, he received second prize in The Patrick Kavanagh Awards, and received a major Arts Council / An Chomhairle Ealaíon Literature Bursary in 2006.
McLoghlin has taught creative writing and literature at University College, Dublin, New York University, The American College, Dublin, Coler Specialty Hospital, and Hunts Point Alliance for Children in the South Bronx, where he was Resident Writer. Most recently, he has facilitated creative writing with Munster Literature Centre, Poetry as Commemoration, The Center for Fiction, The Irish Writers Centre and Hudson Valley Writers Center, as well as many other organisations. He holds an MLitt in Spanish literature (first-class honours) from University College, Dublin, and an MFA from New York University’s Creative Writing Program and lives in Cork with his family.