An Introduction to Memoir (12-week course)
Develop a personal memoir by exploring vulnerability, reflection, and various narrative styles. Gain confidence and writing skills and receive personalised feedback to craft and refine your life story.
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Ready to tell your story?
Life stories have the power to resonate with others, offering a meaningful gift when shared. In this online memoir writing course, you’ll gain a practical understanding of how to craft a compelling memoir while learning to embrace vulnerability with confidence.
Through a combination of inspirational lessons, engaging exercises, and practical assignments, you’ll explore a diverse range of memoir styles, from traditional first-person narratives to more experimental forms such as second-person, fragmented snapshots, montage, and even graphic memoirs. You’ll engage with texts by both professional and non-professional writers, ensuring that whether you have prior writing experience or not, you’ll find relatable and inspiring examples to guide your own storytelling journey.
Importantly, you’ll achieve real progress with one-to-one feedback from your tutor that is tailored to your writing. No generic responses — get specific, actionable advice from an expert.
This course will cover…
- Exploring different forms of memoir
- Understanding your motivations for writing your story
- Identifying key moments and memories to shape your memoir
- Embracing vulnerability and learning how to channel it in your writing
- Examining stories from various points of view
- Gaining the confidence to write your own memoir
This course is perfect for those with no prior formal training who want to master the foundations of memoir writing. Your tutor, Emmanuel Iduma, will review up to 5,000 words of your work, and at the end of the course, you’ll have a one-to-one tutorial to discuss your progress and explore the next steps in your memoir-writing journey.
Start date
Monday 23 February 2026
Location
Online
Length
12 weeks (please see course schedule below)
Price
£495
*Payment plans available. Drop us a line at [email protected] to find out more.
By the end of this course, you will have:
- Clarity on why you want to write your story: Understand your motivations and the types of stories you want to tell.
- Built confidence in writing: Gain practical experience and confidence in writing personal narratives, even in vulnerable or challenging areas.
- Developed skills in memoir crafting: Learn the technical skills required to craft a compelling and reflective memoir, from structure to tone.
- Gained personal and cathartic growth: Explore the emotional and therapeutic aspects of memoir writing, helping to process personal experiences.
- Tailored feedback and guidance:
- Receive personalised feedback: Get feedback on 5,000 words of your memoir to support your growth as a writer.
Course programme
Please note, the module order and/or content of the course may be subject to change.
Module one – Why write your story?
In this module you’ll explore why you might want to write your story. You’ll look at the sorts of things a memoir might contain, and you’ll start to identify moments and memories that you might want to form into your memoir. You’ll submit up to 900 words of writing for assessment from your tutor.
Module two – Reflection
Memoirs are reflections on your life and in this module you’ll explore the reflective voice. You’ll explore elements of your life that have changed your perspective in someway and you’ll read examples of the reflective voice being used in memoir writing.
Module three – Power of vulnerability
In this module you’ll tackle your own vulnerability and how to harness this in your memoir writing. You’ll explore the things that might stop you from writing your memoir and the ways to overcome these.
Module four – Point of view and hybrid memoirs
When we think of memoirs we think of first person accounts, however this isn’t the only way to write your story. In this module you’ll look at examples of memoirs that play with style and form, and you’ll explore stories from different points of view.
Module five – Place and time
This module will help you place your story within the bigger picture, as well as determining when you are ready to embark on writing your memoir. You’ll look at the merits and challenges of writing for catharsis and you’ll tackle tone in your writing.
Module six – Composition and form
In this final module you’ll return to the structural elements of memoir writing. You’ll look at the way you might want to compose your story and you’ll explore reading and writing memoirs using different forms. For this final module, you’ll pull together everything you’ve learnt to submit 1,000 words of your memoir.
There will be two live sessions for this course, which will take place over Zoom.
Zoom one: Friday 27 February, 6–7pm GMT
Zoom two: Bookable one-to-one
The format of the course really suited me, with feedback from the tutor on six pieces of writing, plenty of very high-quality online content, a horizon-expanding reading list and face to face sessions to meet the tutor and other students online.
Why study with National Centre for Writing?
National Centre for Writing has been supporting writers to develop their craft for over 25 years. Our online tutored courses are developed in partnership with University of East Anglia, home to the prestigious School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing, which boasts award-winning alumni including Kazuo Ishiguro, Ian McEwan and Anne Enright. Our course tutors are all published writers, many of whom have studied or taught at UEA themselves.
While many online writing courses are available worldwide, ours stand out by offering:
- One-to-one feedback on up to six assignments, directly from your course tutor
- A tailored learning experience with a maximum of 15 students per class
- The flexibility to progress through the course from anywhere, at any time
- Support and structure to help you develop a consistent writing routine
- Essential skills and knowledge to enhance your craft
- Increased confidence in your ability as a writer
- The opportunity to join our NCW Alumni—an international network of like-minded writers and translators
Meet the tutor
Emmanuel Iduma
Emmanuel Iduma is a writer who trained as a lawyer in Nigeria. He is the author of the travelogue A Stranger’s Pose (2018), which was longlisted for 2019 Ondaatje Prize, and I Am Still With You (2023), a memoir on the aftermath of the Nigerian civil war. He has written for Granta, n+1, the New York Review of Books, Aperture, Yale Review, and others. He was awarded a Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction in 2022. In 2020, Iduma was recognized in Apollo International Art Magazine’s ’40 under 40 Africa’ for the broad social impact of his work.
Iduma has an MFA in Art Writing from the School of Visual Arts, New York City, where he taught for several years. He lives in Lagos, Nigeria and Norwich, UK.
Read Emmanuel’s 10 signposts on the way to a successful writing life →
The course was challenging which was good. I most enjoyed the feedback from my tutor and the other course participants.
How does this course work?
We have partnered with digital learning platform Teachable to host our self-paced courses. The platform is accessible across a range of devices, simple to use, and does not require any specialist equipment.
We want to make sure that you get the most out of our tutored online courses and feel confident that you’re choosing the right course. Each course contains a mixture of teaching content, reading to prompt discussion, writing exercises for you to hone your skills, and group and one-to-one feedback.
Click to read more about how they are structured and what equipment you may need.
The craft of life writing with Fiona Mason
In this episode of The Writing Life podcast, author Fiona Mason discusses her memoir ’36 Hours’ and the craft of life writing.
23 October 2023
Finding hope in an age of crisis – with Tom Whyman
Discussing the concept of hope on the podcast in desperate times, becoming a parent and his philosophical memoir, author Tom Whyman joins us on the podcast.
27 August 2021
Beginning in memoir, step by step
In this article, writer and NCW Academy tutor Jenn Ashworth shares her step by step guide to beginning your memoir, and how to combine the ordinary and the unique in interesting ways.
28 January 2025
Got a question?
If you still have questions, get in touch with the Academy team by emailing [email protected] or phone (+44) 01603 877177 between our working hours of 9am – 5pm BST, Monday to Friday. We’re here to help!