Quincy 400 Writing Workshops with Emmy-Nominated Writer, Lisa Braxton
Join Emmy-nominated Lisa Braxton on throughout September in our historic Richardson Building from 6 – 7:30 PM for any or all three writing workshops focused on memoir writing, storytelling, and sharing your family history. Registration required!
- Write Your Legacy Letter – Thursday, September 11
A legacy letter is a written document of your values, experiences, and hard-earned life lessons. It can also express hopes, blessings, explanations, forgiveness, and gratitude. Legacy letters can strengthen the ties between generations, and they can be great seeds for memoir projects. Learn the history of legacy letters and the top reasons for writing one. In this seminar, you will participate in writing exercises to stimulate ideas, and, by the end of the seminar, you will complete your own letter. - Write Your 5-Minute Memoir – Thursday, September 18
A 5-minute memoir is a brief narrative covering a particular facet of the author’s life. In this seminar, you’ll mine your memory to explore a significant event or incident to produce a first draft mini-memoir that can be touching, poignant, hilarious, or simply entertaining. You will learn to identify your story’s essence, the truth it reveals, and to engage the reader through fictional techniques. Through writing prompts, inspired by short published texts, you’ll produce an initial draft that has the potential to impact and resonate for the reader far beyond the page. - Write Your Story: Page to the Stage – Thursday, September 25
This workshop offers a chance to hear other people’s stories and see how they translate from live tellings to written ones. We will view short videos of people onstage telling a story from their life, which serves as inspiration for the class to write a short piece from their life. Class participants will have the option of telling their story using storytelling techniques discussed during the workshop
Celebrate Quincy 400 with the Quincy Legacy Project. Your story is part of the greater history of Quincy; Share your legacy. TCPL invites you to share your final project from this series with us. Learn more by contacting the Archives and Special Collections Department at qulocalhistory@ocln.org or 617-376-1436.
Lisa Braxton is the author of the memoir, Dancing Between the Raindrops: A Daughter’s Reflections on Love and Loss, published by Sea Crow Press, winner of a silver Living Now Book Award, a bronze Bookfest Award, a Literary Titan Award and a Shelf Unbound Notable Indie Award. She is a grief activist, instructing classes on writing about grief, gives presentations on caregiver empowerment and is a facilitator for Grief Share, a support group for people navigating their grief.
She is also the author of the novel, The Talking Drum, winner of a 2021 Independent Publisher (IPPY) Book Awards Gold Medal, overall winner of Shelf Unbound book review magazine’s 2020 Independently Published Book Award, and winner of a 2020 Outstanding Literary Award from the National Association of Black Journalists.
This program is made possible by the generous sponsorship of the Friends of the Thomas Crane Public Library.
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