Study Groups

Soapstone offers a program of six study groups each year on women writers. People of all genders and identities are welcome. Scholarships are available.

To register for a study group send an email to soapstonewriting@gmail.com, and once you receive a reply saying there is room in the group, we'll ask for payment through Zelle, or, if you prefer, a check made out to Soapstone, 622 SE 29th Avenue, Portland, OR 97214.

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FALL 2026

Reading Literary Memoir
Led by Judith Barrington
Six Sunday mornings: October 24 through November 28
11 am to 1 pm PST
via Zoom (recorded and available to participants for three weeks)
$75 Limited to 16 participants 

We will focus on two literary memoirs. This kind of memoir does not rely on a famous author or a dramatic or scandalous life for its appeal; it relies, rather, on exquisite prose writing that is sometimes compared to accomplished poetry. We’ll examine and discuss the narratives, the craft, and the knotty issues specific to memoir—such as writing about living people and the nature of memory itself—and we’ll reflect on how each book moves us or changes us.

Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, first published in 1994, has acquired the status of a classic and belongs to a sub-genre sometimes called “medical memoir.” This wide category may include work written by doctors, patients, the loved ones of the sufferers or others connected to stories of illness. Grealy’s is the story of one patient’s short life during which she endured over thirty reconstructive and corrective surgeries. Beyond the years spent in treatment, her story—told with honesty, wit, and emotional depth— encompasses twenty years of trying to come to terms with feeling ugly. It’s hardly surprising that it has remained on so many lists of the best memoirs; Grealy’s lyrical prose transforms a heartbreaking story into a memorable reading experience.

The second memoir we will read is Jeanette Winterson’s Why be Happy When You Could be Normal? In contrast to Grealy’s lyrical, rhythmic style, Winterson’s writing feels hurried and almost abrupt. One reviewer said that it gives the impression of “a desperate urgency to make the reader understand.” The author seems almost to be falling over herself to be understood, making it easy for readers to warm to her enthusiasm. Winterson’s good humor and sharp wit spill over into anecdotes and jokes amidst details of her abusive childhood in working-class Manchester and her adoptive mother’s cruel attempts to control her. This story is salvaged by offering a love letter to the written word and showing how books, education, and language provided the writer an escape route from her stifling home. Jeanette Winterson has long been one of my favorite writers since she published Oranges are Not the Only Fruit. Why Be Happy When You Can Be Normal, covers some of the same material that she wrote as fiction back then, now revisited as memoir, with its full weight of well-remembered facts. 

Judith Barrington has a particular interest in memoir. She is the author of two award-winning memoirs: Lifesaving won the Lambda Literary Award and was a finalist for the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir. Her new collection of short memoirs: Virginia’s Apple, won the 2026 Oregon Book Award. Her short memoirs have appeared in literary journals including Creative Nonfiction (“Best Essay” and “Favorite Prizewinning Essays), 1966 A Journal of Creative Nonfiction, the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, and “Notable Essays” in The Best American Essays 2017. Her best-selling text on writing literary memoir, Writing the Memoir: From Truth to Art, is used across the North America, Australia, and Europe. She taught memoir for several decades at creative writing programs in the U.S., the U.K., Mexico, Spain and Greece, and was on the faculty of the MFA Program at the University of Alaska, Anchorage.

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For a list of past study groups go to Previous Study Groups