Maureen Murdock's research on myth and memoir culminated in her most recent book, Unreliable Truth: On Memoir and Memory. Maureen believes that memoirists are our contemporary mythmakers and that the popularity of memoir in our culture today reflects the universal desire to find meaning in the mystery of our lives and to understand our unconscious choices, actions, and dreams. Myth owes its longevity to its power to express typical human emotions that have been experienced throughout successive generations. Memoir owes its popularity to its ability to portray these same enduring feelings in a contemporary individual's life. Both myth and memoir arise from the human need for connection. Myths use symbols and gods and goddesses to explore such themes as heroism, betrayal, the search for the mother/father and the beloved. Memoirs explore the very same themes in the stories of our every day lives.

Beginning with the concept that memory is a particular angle of perception which shapes our sense of identity, in this retreat we will examine how the memories we tell establish our sense of self. It is not the factual truth of our memories that is necessary for crafting them into memoir but the emotional truth of our experience that begins to reveal the underlying patterns of our lives. In this retreat we will look at the basic components of memoir writing and the self-reflection required to craft a memory into a written memoir that has universal appeal. We'll read work by published memoirists, do in-class writing exercises, and have in-class critiques.

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