Instructor: Suzanne Uttaro
Maximum Enrollment: 12
Class Term: 08/02/2026 - 08/29/2026
Tuition/Fees
SCN Member: $205
Non-Member: $255
Class description
This series is designed for women who want to deepen their life-writing practice and craft more fully realized personal stories. Through weekly craft lessons, guided prompts, and discussion, participants will learn to shape memory, family history, and inherited silence into clear, resonant narrative. Ideal for writers with prior experience, the course focuses on refining voice, strengthening narrative focus, and working with complex personal material.
Class goals
Help writers identify the “narrative heat” within personal and family stories. Teach techniques for writing from memory gaps, silences, conflicting accounts, and emotionally charged material. Strengthen skills in scene construction, sensory detail, pacing, and emotional arc Explore how to portray real people with nuance, compassion, and complexity. Provide tools for integrating research, family documents, and inherited stories into memoir. Guide participants in making ethical, grounded choices about telling family stories. Support writers in clarifying themes, developing narrative structure, and deepening voice. Build confidence through weekly prompts, optional sharing, and constructive feedback. Encourage sustainable writing habits and momentum toward a larger project or refined short piece.
Class communication method
This course will be delivered using a combination of weekly written lessons, short video or slide-based lectures, and downloadable prompts. Students will submit weekly writing assignments electronically, and I will provide individualized written feedback on each submission. Class discussions, questions, and optional peer responses will take place in the designated online discussion boards, ensuring a supportive, interactive environment.All instructional materials will be provided digitally. No books or additional purchases are required. Optional reading lists and supplementary materials will be offered for those who wish to explore the topics further, but they are not necessary for full participation in the course.Class outline
Note: Student work = weekly assignments written during the course. No prior writing is required.
Unit 1 — Finding the Story Beneath the Story
Instructional material explores identifying “narrative heat” and choosing focus.
Student work: Write a 1–2 page exploration of a moment, memory, or silence you may want to develop over the course.
Unit 2 — Writing from Fragments, Gaps, and Silence
Instruction covers strategies for writing when memory or documentation is incomplete.
Student work: A short piece built from three fragments, questions, or images.
Unit 3 — Character: Writing Real People with Depth
Instruction examines portraying family members with nuance and compassion.
Student work: A character sketch of one real person, grounded in sensory detail and emotional truth.
Unit 4 — Scene-Making and Emotional Pacing
Instruction focuses on building vivid scenes from memory.
Student work: Draft a 1–3 page scene shaped from a meaningful moment.
Class time commitment
2 to 3 hours per weekInstructor bio
Suzanne Uttaro Samuels is a novelist, essayist, and writing instructor whose work explores women’s resilience, family history, migration, and the silences that shape personal stories. She is the author of Seeds of the Pomegranate (Sibylline Press, 2025) and the forthcoming The Orphans’ Wheel, and her short fiction and essays appear in multiple anthologies and literary journals. A former professor of law and society, she has taught writing and narrative craft for more than two decades in university settings, cultural institutions, libraries, and national parks.
Suzanne leads workshops on life writing, generative practice, and family storytelling for organizations including the Italian American Museum, Adirondack Center for Writing, Casa Belvedere, Denali National Park, and community writing centers. She also writes the Substack newsletter Persephone’s Stories, which blends memoir, creative nonfiction, and reflections on women’s inner lives.
