Writing Workshops

These are small group workshops where we engage with each others stories for inspiration, education and feedback For one-time workshops, there is a minimum of a 2-hour session whereas multi-session workshops can be sculpted to the groups goals and time constraints. Workshops include a combination of writing prompts and conversations with a goal of getting words on to the paper. Some of this will be stream of consciousness writing that can be worked into essays and chapters, as well as crafting our words and thinking about ways to reorganize information so it’s most engaging for the reader. In addition, participants will gain new skills in how to work through writers block and that exhausting feeling of being too overwhelmed to start.

Coaching

These sessions are for individuals and can be booked as one-time sessions or as as ongoing check-ins. Similar to the workshops, these sessions aim to hone your skills in the craft of writing and most importantly have you leaving our sessions with essays and chapters in process. This option is also available for folks who are seeking guidance on how to integrate their own personal story and family history into a speaking tour, media appearances or other public facing community spaces.

Quick Consult

If you want to talk through a project to explore if it is worth pursuing and in what way, we can book a 60-minute conversation to dig in and see whats possible. This is a great choice for folks who are working with an archive or have a story in mind and aren’t sure where to start or what storytelling space is best to pursue (audio, writing, photo etc.).

Quick Edit

If you already have a piece of writing or audio storytelling that you would like edited, we can do a one-time edit. You will send your piece and have it returned with edits, suggestions and some guiding questions to keep you moving forward. This option requires a quick consultation (see below) first.

Some Thoughts

We are all born into an inherited story. Sometimes that story comes in the form of left behind diaries, worn out documents, or through snippets of conversations at the dinner table. Sometimes the story is interpreted through photographs and collected souvenirs. And, in many cases the story lives in the silent spaces of memories never spoken. Sometimes we don’t think about the stories of the past and sometimes they feel like a weight that we need to write away. In my workshops and individual consulting sessions, we will both focus on the craft of writing and rewriting (for those who may be inspired from journals and texts) as well as dive into the complicated questions and ethics of taking family stories, whether they are ours or someone else’s, and writing them for the public eye. Together we will write pages and chapters that are rich in meaning while leaving space for ambiguity and work to take the particular and place it into the context of the universal (and vice versa). And, we will discuss what to do with competing or contradictory memories/facts, the question of whose perspective to write from, how to confront big topics like grief, immigration and love and how to choose what isn’t included in our final piece (sometimes the hardest part). We will also consider the responsibility of writing words that will be read by future generations. And for those who are embarking on multimedia projects, we will explore how to use audio, photographs, primary sources, testimony and other creative elements to bring our stories alive.