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“The past comes to us in fragments finished off by imagination.”
Laura Kalpakian, MEMORY INTO MEMOIR,
University of New Mexico Press, 2021.

Take a Memory… and turn it into a Memoir
A workshop for seniors interested in preserving their personal stories

August 22, 10 am to noon
Winthrop Public Library Community Room
Facilitator: Marian Exall, local writer of mysteries and historical fiction

In this two-hour workshop, we will explore the concept of memoir through our own stories. The aim is to give participants the tools to write these stories down in an engaging way, and the confidence to share them with a younger generation. No previous writing experience necessary.

What we will cover:
 What is “memoir”? We are storytellers, not historians
 Using a writing *prompt to elicit description, context, and significance
 Story structure: beginning, middle, resolution
 Asking questions of the past: research to peel back the layers

*Prompts: come to the workshop with something that evokes a significant moment in your past (recent or distant). It might be a photograph, an old book, a treasured piece of jewelry, or an object as mundane as a spoon or a beach pebble. Through describing and developing context for this object, we will write a scene.

There will be an opportunity to share your work out loud with other participants, but sharing is purely voluntary. We will conclude the session with a discussion of next steps: how to continue the work we have started.

Bring pen and paper (or laptop/tablet, if you are more accustomed to writing on these.)