Writing Our Ancestors Into Fiction

In this 1-day course, we'll explore ancestors as inspiration for fictional narratives. It can be tricky to do our ancestors justice in our writing and even trickier to balance facts, invention, and compelling storytelling. This time together will be spent exploring the challenge through generative exercises and examples designed to access inspiration and draw connections between our own present-day lives and interests and our family histories. We will be writing and workshopping in class. Come with the desire to write your family-inspired stories, leave with some self-generated materials and methods (cohesive ideas, basic plot outline, character studies, etc.) to get you started.