Call it a memoir or a collection of life stories. Why record important events and details about your life? In three sessions, learn about various types of life stories from general information for historic reference to fully developed narratives about highlights and important chapters of your life and the people and places that are or have been a part of it.

The first session will introduce you to several different types of life stories from the recording of basic historic dates, details and events to focused memoirs to personal essays. You will put together a timeline of your life as a starting point and will select one incident to write about in a personal essay for session two. The second session will include a short sharing session and will help you to incorporate storytelling strategies into your second personal essay. The third session will focus on where to go from here, ways of preserving your stories from handmade books to “published” pieces, fully annotated scrapbooks, or focused memoirs. The workshop will include short lessons in strategies for making your stories come to life and exercises to practice these strategies