Editor’s Note: This is the first installment in a series by Dianna Marder–a name you may recognize from her day job at the Philadelphia Inquirer.  She’ll be writing about her volunteer work in a local prison, teaching inmates serving life-sentences how to tell their life stories.  Look for it every Tuesday on the First Person Arts Blog.

Life-writing with lifers

In the spring of 2008, I developed a Memoir Writing Workshop to expand First Person Arts’ fledgling Community Writing Program.  It’s a volunteer project designed to serve for adults who may be isolated or ignored, or unable to afford a traditional college-level class.

The curriculum is easily replicated, and my hope is to recruit ever more volunteers to lead ever more writing workshops for an expanding universe of unlikely First Person memoirists.

My first class was with women over 50 and I called it Memoir at Middle Age because I didn’t want them to think I thought their lives were about to end and that’s why they should write their life stories.

Yesterday I began my second, six-week memoir writing series – this one for lifers at the local maximum security prison. I figured lifers, like middle-aged women, were accustomed to being ignored and would welcome the attention.

Ten guys signed up for the class and twelve showed. Still, I anticipate attrition.  Writing isn’t quite as terrifying as public-speaking, but it stands to reason that at least one in 12 not-so-angry men will prefer to spend the two hours locked in a cell.

We began with conversation about how the line between truth and a good lie are so blurred these days.  And then I asked the men to write about a time in childhood or adolescence when they knowingly, purposefully lied.

I thought it was an appropriate writing prompt because it furthered the discussion about truth and fiction in what gets published as memoir.   And, as writing exercises go, I thought this one would arouse some emotion but not necessarily encourage the men to get in touch with their anger.  It’s not as if they’re middle aged women.

- dianna marder