Roots and Branches: Writing Your Family Tree, Part 2

Saturday, October 16-Sunday, October 17

1-4pm ET both days

This workshop is a continuation of Sarah’s two-day workshop this past December, but all are welcome!

We don’t get to choose our families, but when we write our family stories, we do get to make choices about how we frame, represent, embrace, and challenge the family histories we’ve been told, discovered, or remember through the years. In this two-day generative workshop, we’ll dig deep to hit the roots of our family trees and write the stories that we can pass down to the next generation.

Family is a rich and layered topic to explore in creative nonfiction, and we’ll examine different modes that can help us craft family stories that are both personal and ready to be shared publicly.

In this two-day workshop, we’ll continue exploring ways to tell compelling and well-crafted family stories through a series of guided exercises. The weekend will focus on experimenting with different techniques to thoughtfully render topics that don’t fit neatly into fact or fiction. Specifically, we’ll write about family secrets, legends, and curses. Students will generate and share new material during the workshop and complete short readings that model the techniques we’ll practice.

Students need to come with a photograph of a family member they're interested in writing about, and/or already have written about. If you were a student in Sarah’s workshop last December, please bring your work from that class.

This online workshop is suitable for all writers. No experience required.

Here's a "syllabus" of books Sarah will be visiting during this course and recommends reading if you'd like to learn more (includes a link to purchase Sarah's own book). No need to read or purchase these before the course. You can also order these books to the store for curbside pickup or shipping through this form.

All students who register and attend will receive 10% off a future workshop!

This workshop will take place on Zoom. The link will be provided via email the day of the event. Registration ends at 12pm ET on 10/16. Our minimum enrollment is 6 and our maximum is 15. Please head to whitewhalebookstore.com/student-policies for more information on our refund and cancellation policies, and to whitewhalebookstore.com/workshops for more information about our workshop program.

There will be a limited number of scholarships available for folks experiencing financial hardship at the moment or who otherwise find the fee to be a burden; please email events@whitewhalebookstore.com for more information.

About the instructor:

Sarah Shotland is the author of the novel Junkette, and a playwright whose work has been produced in theaters nationally and internationally. She is Program Director and cofounder of Words Without Walls, which brings creative writing to jails, prisons, and drug treatment centers in Pittsburgh. Her essays about that work have been published in The Iowa Review, Creative Nonfiction, Baltimore Review, SmokelongQuarterly, and elsewhere. She teaches in the MFA program at Chatham University.