Online: Writing Personal Stories, Tuesday afternoons, April 11 – May 30

Writing Personal Stories 

 ~ A wealth of writing and sharing

Online: Tuesday afternoons, 1 – 3 p.m.
April 11 –  May 30, 2023 (Or to June 6 if the course fills up)
Offered on Zoom and accessible from anywhere there's internet 

Also offered this spring: “Welcome to Creative Writing,” “Writing Kid Lit,” “Intensive Creative Writing,” and “Extreme Creative Writing.” See here {and scroll down}. 

If you've ever considered writing your personal stories, this course is for you. We’ll look at memoirs, travel writing, personal essays, family history ~ personal stories of all kinds. Plus, of course, we’ll work on creativity and writing technique and have fun doing it. 

Whether you want to write a book or just get your thoughts down on paper, this weekly course will get you going. We'll reveal the tricks and conventions of telling true stories, and we’ll show you how to use the techniques of the novel to recount actual events. Weekly writing exercises and friendly feedback from the instructor will help you move forward on this writing adventure. Whether you want to write for your family and friends or for a wider public, don't miss this course.

Our guest speaker will be Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt, author of the critically acclaimed memoir Peacekeeper’s Daughter. 

Tanya holds an MA in English Literature from McGill University and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. These days, she lives in Quebec’s Eastern Townships with her husband and four children. She was born in Germany to French-Canadian parents and grew up on various army bases across Canada, from Quebec’s North Shore to Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. When she was twelve, her family moved to Tiberius, Israel, where her father served as a United Nations peacekeeper on the Golan Heights. When war broke out with Lebanon, Tanya and her family moved to Beirut, where they lived for seven months, at the height of the Lebanese civil war.

Tanya’s journal from 1982-1983 became the seeds of her memoir, Peacekeeper’s Daughter.

Peacekeeper’s Daughter is both a coming-of-age story and an exploration of family dynamics, the shattering effects of violence and war, and the power of memory itself to reconcile us to our past selves, to the extraordinary places we have been and sights we have seen.

Tanya is also the author of a volume of poetry titled Chaos Theories of Goodness, published by Shoreline Press. Tanya has also published numerous poems and stories (click here and here for a taste), and has been nominated for a number of awards (see here). She is currently working on  a collection of essays, plus a number of works for children and a novel for adults.

You can read an excerpt from Peacekeeper’s Daughter here, It’s available through the publisher, Thistledown Press here or order it through your local bookstore – see here.

Chaos Theories of Goodness can be ordered through Shoreline Press here.

Instructor Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada's most popular blog for writers, taught creative writing at Ryerson University (now Toronto Metropolitan University) and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Sarnia to Saint John. But his proudest boast is that he’s has helped many of his students get published.  

Read reviews of Brian's various courses and workshops here (and scroll down).

Fee: $193.81 plus 13% hst = $219

To reserve your spot, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

See all of Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here.