Mapping the Self: A Life in Six Chapters
Course Overview
This workshop guides participants through the foundational stage of memoir writing: understanding the architecture of their own lives.
Before a memoir can be shaped, the writer must learn to see their experiences as interconnected rather than isolated. Through mapping time, place, turning points, and personal archives, students begin assembling the raw material from which narrative meaning emerges.
Participants explore how memory arrives in fragments — sensory impressions, emotional echoes, places that linger — and learn techniques for organising these fragments into a coherent personal landscape. This workshop is practical, reflective, and deeply grounding, offering a structured way to begin transforming lived experience into narrative insight.
What Students Will Learn
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How memoir begins with orientation, not writing — recognising patterns, themes, and emotional currents across a life.
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The three core mapping methods: chronological mapping, geographical mapping, and narrative structuring.
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How to conduct a life review, gathering formative moments, relationships, transitions, conflicts, and achievements.
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The Six‑Chapter Life framework, using emotional atmosphere and developmental stages to organise memory.
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The role of place in memory, and how landscapes, rooms, and cities unlock vivid recall.
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How to build a personal archive, using objects, documents, photographs, and family stories.
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Identifying turning points, the moments that create narrative movement and change.
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How research deepens memoir, connecting personal experience to historical and cultural context.
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Ethical interviewing, including how to approach reluctant narrators with care.
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Reading as a writer, analysing memoirs for structure, theme, and emotional resonance.
What Students Will Take Away
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A clearer sense of their life’s structure, themes, and emotional patterns.
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A mapped outline of their life across six developmental stages.
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A list of places, objects, and turning points that hold narrative potential.
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A preliminary personal archive to draw from in future writing.
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A seven‑step structural framework for shaping memoir material.
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Greater confidence in recognising meaning within memory.
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A deeper understanding of how place, time, and change shape identity.
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Practical exercises completed during the workshop that can be expanded into scenes or chapters.
Topics Covered
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Orientation: how memoir begins
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Returning to raw material and early fragments
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Chronological, geographical, and narrative mapping
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The Life Review and constructing a personal archive
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The Six‑Chapter Life model
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Place as emotional and sensory memory
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Turning points as engines of narrative
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Research and historical context
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Ethics, interviewing, and family silences
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Reading memoir analytically
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Moving from mapping to meaning
What to Bring
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A notebook or journal
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A pen
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Optional: photographs, letters, objects, or documents that evoke memory
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Any personal items they may wish to include in their “archive box”
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A willingness to reflect deeply and engage with memory in a structured way
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Dr Marie Geissler
Dr Marie Geissler is a cultural historian who is passionate about helping people write about their lives in ways that build confidence, insight, and personal empowerment. Drawing inspiration from archaeology—the practice of uncovering both visible and hidden layers of history—she encourages students to explore and reflect on their own experiences, memories and stories.
Marie is the author of numerous publications, including Dreaming the Land: Aboriginal Art from Remote Australia, an acclaimed work that profiles the lives and achievements of 100 leading Indigenous artists who helped pioneer Australia’s contemporary Indigenous art movement.
With more than three years of experience teaching memoir, Marie creates a supportive and engaging learning environment where writers of all backgrounds can discover and develop their unique voices. She is also a Board Member of the Foreign Correspondents Association of Australia and the South Pacific, where she actively promotes Australian innovation, creativity, and culture to international audiences.
Marie brings warmth, curiosity, and a deep appreciation for personal storytelling to her memoir classes, helping students uncover meaningful connections between their lived experiences and the stories they choose to tell.
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