In this class we will spend time with our memories of the past and we will contain that narrative both physically and structurally in a small space like a short car ride. By putting our narratives into constricted places we can paradoxically have more room to expand on a singular moment in time. We can hone in on a turning point. Think of the sonata form in music, the villanelle in poetry or a stage for dancers. All of these are considered containers that begin shaping a work from the onset.

Instructor Gail Hosking is the author of the memoir Snake’s Daughter: The Roads in and out of War (U of Iowa Press), the chapbook The Tug (Finishing Line Press), and a recent book of poems Retrieval (Main Street Rag Press). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and Literature from Bennington College, and taught at Rochester Institute of Technology for 15 years. Her work has appeared in literary journals for decades in places like Upstreet, Chattahoochee Review, Lillith Magazine, Terrain, Twohawks Quarterly and Consequence Magazine. Two of her essays were considered “most notable” in Best American Essays.