Turn Life into Stories (Age 21+)

September 19 & 26 from 6:00 – 8:00 pm

If you’ve thought of your life as a story and dreamed of being a writer, this class is an opportunity to turn events from your life into stories or narrative poems! Teaching Artist Lindsey – a professional writer who has taught for more than 30 years – will introduce you to the traditional story structure that has successfully engaged readers since antiquity. She’ll provide numerous exercises by other professional writers that will help spur you to write – and avoid “writer’s block”. You may even begin a process of self-discovery and healing from any adverse events you’ve experienced. Using your own life events to create engaging stories or narrative poems, you’ll begin to understand how meaningful your life is!

Recommended reading: The Story and Its Writer, edited by Ann Charters. Inexpensive used copies are available through online thrift bookstores; any edition works for this class.

Supplies you’ll need to provide: notebook for hand-writing drafts; portfolio/folder to hold typed drafts and final copies; pens.

Please enter through the 5th Street door.

Teaching Artist: Lindsey Martin-Bowen

Lindsey Martin-Bowen is a writer and Pushcart and Pulitzer-prize nominee. In 2023, redbat books published Lindsey’s seventh book of poetry, CASHING CHECKS with Jim Morrison. Pierian Springs Press released her The BOOK of FRENZIES in 2022. New Letters, I-70 Review, Thorny Locust, Flint Hills Review, Coal City Review, Porter Gulch Review, Silver Birch Press, Ekphrastic Review, Phantom Drift, Rockhurst Review, and other lit zines have run her poems. For more than thirty years, Lindsey taught writing and literature. Among the numerous writing classes she taught was her favorite: “Turn Life into Stories”, which encouraged students to write short fiction based upon—but not limited to—their life events. Lindsey holds MA and Juris Doctor degrees.

Cost: $40 Member / $50 Non-Member

Location: Art Center East