Writing From Within: A Family History Writing Workshop

Workshop facilitator: Dr. Cristina D. Ramírez - Head of the English Department at the University of Arizona - 30 year educator and published writer of 3 books. She’s from El Paso, Texas and a UTEP Miner

Each of us carries a memory about ourselves or possibly a poignant story of a member of our family - mother, grandmother, father, sister, aunt, and/or brother. We are usually, almost always, somewhere in that family story, too. It’s that nagging story or moment in time that won’t let you go. These moments are crying-out to be written, recorded, and told.

With your story and your pen, you will define yourself.

Don’t let your stories slip into a place of forgetting.

Do you have stories about your family that intersect with history but don’t know how to start the story? Does your family have that story about your grandfather or grandmother that you’ve heard told 100 times but it’s never been written? Do you have letters, recipes, quilts, or a journal from a family member that you don’t know how to write about? This writing workshop will help you start the process of writing from within your own knowledge of your family history, an ancestral remembering.. 

Cristina D. Ramirez defines ancestral remembering as an ungraspable knowing of who we are in relation to our ancestral past. Writing about our family’s history and family life stories helps us to grasp or tap into the roots of who we are and where we come from. Ironically, these stories can also give us direction in where we are going. 

Details

Date: Sunday January 26, 2025

Time: 10 am - 3 pm (working lunch - 12 - 1)

Location: Sunset Parlor, 1307 N Oregon. St. EPTX 79902 

Price: $200 - to include 5 hours of writing instruction delivery by a 30 year expert educator on writing and author of A Story of Stories: The Texas Border Barrio Life and Writings of Doña Ramona González & lunch

Enrollment: 25 beginner to intermediate writers

Early Bird Special: $175 with Coupon Code: EarlyBird25 *must enroll before January 5, 2025 

Writing workshop takeaways:

• creative ways to pinpoint the event and memory to write about,

• Tips on writing down the moment, event, or even glimpse of memory

• Several pages of writings, including a poem and beginning of an essay 

Schedule for January 26, 2025

10 am - 11 am - Identifying your subject, who or what will you be writing about; start by writing a poem; writing a poem about your subject is the start to the project; share your writing with the group

11 am  - 12 pm - Expanding the vision of your project; what do you envision? A short story? A blog? A series of poems? A webpage? A book? Quick writes and vision board.

Working lunch 12 pm - 1 pm - Sharing your vision with others

1 pm - 2 pm - Writing out the thoughts, promptings, and memories; before class, read “Counter Revolution” by Melissa Hung. We will start writing the longer essay; unpack the story - what is the author “doing” in the story; license for you to be the author about a family story

2 pm - 3 pm - Writing, writing, writing; working with your partner and getting feedback from the workshop facilitator