✍️ WORKSHOP: Turning Ancestral Research Into Personal Narrative w/ Katie Lee Ellison
** This is a LIVE workshop. Attendees will be sent a video recording after the workshop. **
How can we mine stories from family research and documents? What craft elements can writers use when incorporating outside texts and materials into their writing?
Join us for a 90-minute workshop with writer Katie Lee Ellison. Writers will learn how to build stories of ourselves from letters, photographs, public records, doctors’ prescriptions, and dating profiles. Excerpts from writing by Audre Lorde, E.J. Koh, Elissa Washuta, and others will serve as examples of how to combine our primary sources with craft and form, all in service to the nuances of our identities.
Writers will leave the workshop with:
A clearer sense of what questions they want to answer and/or whose story they want to write
An understanding of craft elements at their disposal when working with research
A few pieces of writing that they can develop into larger work
Writers should bring along any ancestral research, object, or story they have or want to work with, as well as a sense of whom they want to write about and why.
About Katie Lee Ellison
Katie Lee Ellison is working on a memoir in essays, pieces of which are published in Shenandoah, Moss, J Journal, The Seventh Wave, Crab Creek Review, Arcadia, and elsewhere. She was a 2016-2017 Hugo House Fellow, a 2018 fellow at the Yiddish Book Center, and a 2020 Tin House Summer Workshop attendee. She holds a BA in English Literature from Wellesley College and an MFA from the University of Idaho, and she is the creator, host, and curator of the reading series, Nonfiction for No Reason.
Your London Writers' Salon Hosts:
Parul Bavishi and Matt Trinetti are the co-founders of the London Writers' Salon, creators of the webby-nominated Writers' Hour daily writing sessions, and hosts of the London Writers' Salon podcast.
Parul Bavishi has been an editor for over a decade. In addition to running LWS she helps thriller, YA and non-fiction writers level up their craft and get published. She writes and edits for the Story Grid. She has worked as an editor and literary scout at Random House, Quercus & Eccles Fisher. She analyses TV hit shows (Killing Eve, Ozark, Game of Thrones) on the Story Grid Showrunners Podcast.
Matt Trinetti is a writer, publisher, TEDx speaker, and facilitator. In addition to running LWS, Matt designs programs to help unfulfilled professionals pursue creative work, start businesses, and reinvent their careers. Matt's work has appeared in Quartz, Observer, Creative Mornings, and on his blog GiveLiveExplore.
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