People write for many different reasons—for insight and direction, healing and forgiveness, communication and comic relief. Whether you are looking for a path to self-discovery or the road to publication, learn to write from the text of your own life in this inspirational and experiential workshop in memoir. As part of a collaborative exploration of our personal journeys, we will use scents, photos, and other props to awaken our memories.

We will tell stories to warm up for writing. And we will jumpstart our pens with writing starts—words and phrases that will give you a clear set of footprints to follow onto the blank page. Along the way, you will discover how to silence the critical inner voices that stifle creativity, throw away the rules that bind the imagination, and carve out the time and space for writing. By the end of the workshop, you will have in hand your first writer’s notebook—created in just 15 minutes a day and filled with stories to preserve, publish, or pass on.