Free Community Writing Workshop with Karim Shamsi-Basha.
Making Memories into Memoirs: How to Capture & Convey Your Stories
A free workshop with Karim Shamsi-basha
All of us would love to share our life stories with family and friends. This workshop will include readings from best-selling memoirs as well as detailed instruction on outlines and structure. The workshop will include time for writing. You will leave with a plan, an outline, and the beginning of your life story. Participants are encouraged to browse through the Memoir section of the bookstore before the workshop and read some before the workshop. (This is a hands-on workshop. Bring your computer or writing materials.)
January 4, 2020, 10:00 am- 4:00 pm
Coastal Arts Center of Orange Beach
26389 Canal Rd.
Orange Beach, AL 36561
Schedule
10:00 - 10:30 am
Welcome and introductions. Each participant can share a bit of their story. If you have not put much thought into your memoir, you will be inspired after this!
10:30 - 11:00 am
Readings from best-selling memoirs and discussion.
11:00 - 11:30 am
Writing time. Participants will write the introduction to your memoir. Karim will be on hand to help walk you through this exciting task.
11:30 - 12:15 pm
Participants will tackle memoir structure including Mind Maps, Outlines, and Chapter Summaries.
12:15 - 1:15 pm
Lunch on your own.
1:15 - 2:00 pm
Mind-Mapping. The first step of creating your memoir, the Mind-Map - a collection of thought-balloons of what comes to your mind as you think of your family, history, and story.
2:00 - 2:45 pm
Outline & Summarize. The second step of creating your memoir is to transform the Mind Map into an Outline. Then we will expand the Outline into Chapter Summaries.
2:45 - 3:15 pm
Writing time. Now that you have an outline and a chapter summary, you can begin writing your first chapter, or you can continue working on your chapter summaries.
3:15 - 4:00 pm
Sharing stories and discussion. Participants are encouraged to read some of their introduction, outline, chapter summaries, or first chapter.
Questions
Please address additional questions to Jessica Langston by email at jjsayspoetryplz@me.com.
Learn more about AWC’s free Community Writing Workshops here, and consider sponsoring your own today.
About Karim Shamsi-Basha
Karim Shamsi-Basha immigrated to the United States in 1984 from Damascus – Syria. His blog, Arab in Alabama, is on the Huffington Post nationally and all over Europe. He won two prizes in the 84th Writer’s Digest International Competetion – one for a poem and another for an essay. He has written and photographed extensively for several print and online publications including Sports Illustrated, People, Time, Southern Living, The Alabama News Center and the Birmingham News/al.com. He has published three coffee-table books: The Beauty Box, a book about beauty parlors in The South and Shelter from the Storm, a collection of portraits and quotes of the homeless. This book was commissioned by the Salvation Army and has received worldwide accolades. Home Sweet Home Alabama, shows Alabama as one of the most beautiful and friendly states. In 2005, he was one of 100 photographers commissioned to photograph for the book: America 24/7. Karim's book, PAUL and me, A Journey to and from the Damascus Road, became an international phenomena and landed the number four best seller spot in religion books on Amazon.
About Jessica Langston
Jessica graduated from the University of South Alabama with a Bachelor’s in English in 2007, and a Master’s in Creative Writing in 2009. Jessica published her first book of poetry and photography in 2009 and has published several poems including inclusion in The Birmingham Arts Journal and Whatever Remembers Us: An Anthology of Alabama Poetry. Her poetry awards include the Shelley Memorial Scholarship and contest awards by the National Federation of State Poetry Societies, Poets and Patrons Chicagoland and the Alabama State Poetry Society. In 2014, she formed Poetic Presence, a 501 (c)3 designed to promote poetry in the community and to share the experience of written word artists with rising poets and writers--including MerFaire, a sea-themed celebration of art and books held every first Sunday of May. She was the chair person for the Alabama Poet Laureate nominations board, newsletter editor for the Alabama Writers' Conclave, and event coordinator for the Alabama State Poetry Society. She now holds the position of Vice President and Program Chair for the Alabama Writers Conclave.