You're invited to a “Writing Personal Stories” course

Writing Personal Stories

 ~ A weekly class dedicated to the pleasures of writing your stories & thoughts

Online: Tuesday afternoons, 1 – 3 p.m.
April 14 – June 16, or to June 23 if the class fills up. No class April 28 or June 9
Offered on Zoom and accessible from anywhere there's internet 

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.

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.

Tanya has also published two volumes of poetry with Shoreline Press: Chaos Theories of Goodness (here) and The Hospitality of Trees (here). Her collection of short memoir pieces, Carrying War, will be published by Dundurn Press in August 2026 (here).

Tanya’s also published numerous poems, stories, and essays and has been nominated for many, many awards. A partial list includes:

2025 – Finalist, Fiddlehead Creative NonFiction Contest for “Sabra Chronicles”

2024 – Winner, Vita Poetica Writing and Art Contest for “Maria Lactans” 

2022 – Runner-up, McNally Rand Booksellers/Prairie Firs CNF Contest for “5972, 12^th Avenue, Rosemont” 

2021 – Finalist, Quebec Writers’ Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction for Peacekeeper’s Daughter: A Middle East Memoir (Thistledown Press, 2021)

2021 – Winner, 2021 Doula Support Foundation’s Birth Story Contest  (2nd place) for “Winter Rose” 

2020 – Winner, The New Quarterly’s Edna Staebler Award for Personal Essay (2nd place) for “Terrorist Mythologies”

2019 – “Terrorist Narratives” (first published in Malahat Review) selected and published in Best Canadian Essays of 2019 (forthcoming)

2018 – Finalist in CANSCAIP’s 2018 Writing for Children Awards for “All Alone, War Pigeon” (picture book category)

Currently, Tanya is working on some books for children and a novel for adults about American expats in Beirut called Birdsong Hollow.

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 called Toronto Metropolitan University) and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Saskatoon to Toronto to Saint John. But his proudest boast is that he’s has helped many of his students get published.  

Read reviews and other pieces about or inspired by Brian's writing courses, workshops, and retreats here (and scroll down).

Fee: $257.52 plus 13% hst = $291

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

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