Memoir Collective

Memoir Collective was an assignment completed by students in Helen Lepp Friesen’s Rhetoric of Nonfiction RHET-3150 in the winter of 2019. The focus of the Rhetoric of Nonfiction class was the study of autobiography and biography writing, where students also practised the art of these genres. One of the objectives of the Memoir Collective was to engage in biography writing and give voice to everyday people telling everyday stories. Students contributed names for the Biography writing project and then voted to determine the project title as Memoir Collective.

Based on Dave Isay’s book Listening is an Act of Love, students were encouraged to practise active listening. The assignment included coming up with an idea of who to interview, developing a list of interview questions, acquiring ethics permission, recording the live interview with a person of their choice, and then putting the information together as a podcast or video. The following students made their projects available for publication on the department website.