Writing the Stories of My Life: Remembering Through Work

Day: Wednesdays

Dates: October 30 – December 4, 2024

Time: 9:30am-12:00pm

Location: Carleton University

Price: $200 +HST

Parking Info & Room Number will be sent by email 1-2 days prior to the lecture date

Overview

We all have a story to tell.  Often we think of a life story or memoir as a chronology of events.  However, knowing where to begin can become so overwhelming that we put off writing the story at all.  This is an invitation to re-collect, record and share the stories from your life through the lens of work.  What were the chores you did as a child? Were you expected to work as a teen? How did work play a role in your young adult life? What kind of work did your mother do? Your father? How is your adult life defined by work?  Who were the most inspiring people in your working life? Least inspiring? What were the challenges? How might writing about what we did as we define as “work” give us a glimpse into who we were and who we have become? Please bring your own writing instruments to a safe environment where you will experiment with writing strategies using prompts, share your writing with others, and begin your collection of life-stories.

There are writers who write for fame. And there are writers who write because we need to make sense of the world we live in; writing is a way to clarify, to interpret, to reinvent. We may want our work to be recognized, but that is not the reason we write. We do not write because we must; we always have a choice. We write because language is the way we keep a hold on life. With words we experience our deepest understandings of what it means to be intimate. We communicate to connect, to know community. Even though writing is a solitary act, when I sit with words that I trust will be read by someone, I know that I can never be truly alone.”—bell hooks

About the Lecturer

Dr. Anna Rumin is a native Montrealer whose identity has been shaped by the political landscape of her home province, her Russian roots, a passion for lifelong learning that has been woven both formally in academia and informally through travel, voracious reading and writing, and a love for the stories hidden in our natural world.

Her interest in narrative inquiry stems from her belief that not only do we all have a story to tell but that our stories help us to better understand who we were, who we are and who we are becoming. She has now designed fifteen memoir-based writing workshops that invite participants to think of themselves as the narrators of their lives, as seen and written through a particular lens.

Anna is committed to supporting those with whom she works by providing them with opportunities to set and meet their goals. In her spare time, Anna writes short fiction and has been the recipient of numerous awards.