Take a memoir class given by a master of the genre, Tristine Rainer

Tristine Rainer came to our conference four years ago and became our ONLY instructor ever to receive 5 stars from each of the attendees to her memoir class.

We are honored that her schedule allows her to return.

If you are interested in memoir writing, learn from this
Master of the craft. She has helped shaped the way modern memoirs are written.

Attending Your Life as Story may well be the most beneficial two hours of your memoir writing career.

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Tristine Rainer, Ph.D. is a pioneer and expert in journal writing and narrative autobiography.  Her book The New Diary: How to Use a Journal for Self-guidance and Expanded Creativity (1978, updated 2004) is credited with beginning the personal writing movement in the United States and Europe, and now Asia. The New Diary has sold over 200,000 copies domestically and, for over 30 years, has been a text in university Psychology, Writing, Education, and Occupational Therapy courses.
Rainer’s book Your Life as Story: Discovering the New Autobiography and Writing Memoir as Literature (1997) was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. College and university instructors assign it in creative writing and story structure classes and thousands of published memoirists (some quite renown) have relied on it.
Before founding the non-profit Center for Autobiographic Studies in 1996, Rainer co-founded another prescient organization: the Women’s Studies Program at UCLA in 1972. In the mid-1970’s, she co-taught with diarist Anaïs Nin a creative writing course for International College, where they developed techniques for nurturing the unique voice of each writer.
In 1979 Rainer took a 20-year sabbatical from university teaching to slog it out in the television movie business. Her first job was as a Development Exec at Dan Curtis Productions (Dark Shadows, Winds of War). After several other development jobs, she became President of Grand Central Films, a co-venture for international co-productions between Thames Television and D.L.Taffner. Independently, as an writer/producer, she nurtured projects from conception to broadcast under her own banner: Games Mother Never Taught You (CBS, Loretta Swit, Sam Waterston), Having it All (ABC, Dyan Cannon) Secrets of a Married Man (NBC, William Shatner, Cybill Sheppard) and Forbidden Nights (CBS, Melissa Gilbert). Having shaped true life stories into popular television films, she returned to writing books and lecturing to teach memoirists how to craft their own life experiences.
Her understanding of story acquired in the trenches, combined with her academic background in literature, led her to write Your Life as Story and to create the first autobiographic writing course for UCLA Extension (1996), the first autobiographic film course for University of Hawaii (2003), and the first memoir class in the USC Masters of Professional Writing Program, where for 11 years she was a faculty member until 2010. Currently she is finishing her own memoir for publication and consulting as an editor and coach for other authors.