The Johann Fust Library Foundation continues its writers’ education program with a two-day class on writing memoir, taught by writing professor Chrissy Kolaya. This class offers the opportunity to go deeper into or get started on your own memoir or family story project.
Everyone has a tale to tell, and there are many reasons to write down your own or your family’s story. Writing can help to unveil insights and meaning drawn from family legends, memories, conversations, letters, and photos.
Students will explore aspects of the writing craft as they specifically apply to memoir. These include accessing memories, drafting scene, establishing point of view, creating the setting, and filling in the spaces with imagined dialogue to help connect more deeply with the people in your story.
Plan to attend the panel discussion Telling Our Stories: Writing Family History and Personal Memoir on Thursday, March 19, and then work on your project by attending this hands-on memoir-writing class the following days.
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Chrissy Kolaya is an Associate Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Central Florida. Aspiring local writers may have attended her class in writing short fiction in 2024 or her Literary Series talk with fellow professor Jamie Poissant in 2023.
Chrissy is a poet and fiction writer, author of Charmed Particles : a novel and two books of poems: Any Anxious Body a nd Other Possible Lives . Her work has been included in anthologies by Norton , Milkweed Editions , and in a number of literary journals.
Chrissy is passionate about collaboration and has worked with filmmakers and composers on adaptations of her work. Her work has been supported by grants, fellowships, and awards from the Fiction Meets Science Program at the Hanse-Wissenschaftskolleg Institute for Advanced Studies in Germany, the Norman Mailer Writers Colony, the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Loft Literary Center, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Lake Region Arts Council, and the University of Minnesota.
She teaches in the creative writing MFA program at the University of Central Florida, where she was awarded a 2022 Reach for the Stars Award, one of the university’s highest faculty honors.
Class will be held in the Boca Grande Community Center.
Friday, March 20 & Saturday, March 21 from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. both days
Lunches, beverages, and snacks will be provided (catered by Newlin's Mainely Gourmet).
$350 per person - Registration is required.
Class size will be limited.
