Story Circle Journal The newsletter for women with stories to tell... Volume 5 Number 1, February 2001 OWL‐Circle Memoir Project Goes Naonal! For the past three years, we’ve been telling you about our Memoir must be written be- Older Women’s Legacy Circle Memoir Project—a grant-funded cause each of us must possess a project that enabled us to create and offer some fifty free memoir created version of the past. workshops for 500 senior women in the Austin TX area. Each Created: that is, real in the workshop consisted of five two-and-one-half hour sessions, sense of tangible, made of the scheduled over a five-week period. One of our special goals for the project stuff of a life lived in place and was to create an instructional program that introduces memoir-writing in history. And the downside of through a series of innovative autobiographical writing any created thing as well: We techniques. Our grant project is finished, the materials must live with a version that have been field-tested, evaluated, and revised. We’re now attaches us to our limitations, ready to make the program available nationwide. to the inevitable subjectivity of Designed by women teachers and writers, our points of view. We must the OWL-Circle Memoir Workshops feature acquiesce to our experience writing topics dear to women’s hearts: an and our gift to transform expe- exploration of who we are and have been, our rience into meaning. You tell personal family histories, significant events and me your story, I’ll tell you mine. people in our lives, our work lives (both in and out of the home), our significant —Patricia Hampl relationships, and the joys of our spirits The workshop package includes the participant’s workbook and an extensive instructor’s manual, a dependable guide for even the inexperienced facilitator. It offers many unique writing techniques which have proved successful in encouraging even the most reluctant writer to tell her life stories. The participants experience an immediate success that encourages them to continue writing, in the workshop and beyond. “The workshop caused me to think more about my history and the importance of recording it,” one woman said, “not only for my heirs but for my own benefit.” Another added, “This experience helped me to understand more fully how happy and blessed I am.” In This Issue . If you are a Story Circle member interested in offering an OWL-Circle workshop in your community, the package is available to you, your women’s organization, or your church for $100 plus $5 shipping. You will receive one instructor’s manual and a master Memoir Project Goes National....1 -copy of the workbook, which you may duplicate as often as you like. A member of the The Story Circle Network.....2 original Austin OWL-Circle project will also be available to consult with you and LifeStory Briefs....3 answer your questions. To purchase the package, or for more information, write to OWL -Circle Memoir Project, PO Box 500127, Austin TX, 78750. Or you may email us at Writing & Healing....4 [email protected]. A Reader Tells Her Story....5 Our Austin TX OWL-Circle workshops are scheduled and organized by Karen Meet Other Life-Writers....6 Leach, a freelance writer who has worked as a newspaper editor and reporter and in Books for the Journey....9 health-care marketing. Karen also writes for The Good Life, a monthly magazine in Austin. If you live in the Austin area and would like to plan a workshop for your True Words from Real Women....10 women’s organization, church, or senior residential facility, please call Karen at 512-477 We’re Filling Our Sugar Bowl….16 -3155, or email her at [email protected]. The charge for the five-session Read Any Good Books Lately?….16 workshop (including the services of a facilitator) is only $50 per person, plus a $5 Market Watch…..17 workbook fee. If you live in the Austin area and are interested in becoming a facilitator, let Karen know about your interest, your background, and your experience. For LifeWriting Teachers…..18 This project is designed to carry out Story Circle’s mission: to help women A Story Circle News RoundUp....19 everywhere share the stories of their lives. We hope you’ll join us in this important Mini-Stories From Our Readers....20 national effort!—Susan Albert Page 2 The Story Circle Journal Stories from the Heart February 8-9, 2002 Town Lake Holiday Inn, Austin TX Story Circle Mark your calendars now for our first Story Circle Conference! STORY CIRCLE is a quarterly The program for this unique conference features the newsletter, published in February, nationally-known speaker and author, Dr. Betty Sue Flowers, plus workshops, panels, May, August, and November. It is opportunities to share your story, exhibitors, entertainment...lots of exciting stuff! If written by and for women who want you’d like to be involved (offer a workshop, share your story, exhibit) please write to to share their experiences. Its pur- Judith Helburn, 5914 Highland Hills Dr, pose is to encourage readers to be- Austin TX 78731, or email her at [email protected]. come writers, guide women to set down their true stories, and encour- age the sharing of women’s lives. Please plan to join us for this unique and exciting event! This newsletter is provided for infor- mation and is not intended to replace The Story Circle Network qualified therapeutic assistance. The Story Circle Network—What is it What can I contribute to the and who are the members? Network? The Story Circle Network is made up The Story Circle Network is built Editor: Susan Wittig Albert of women who want to explore their lives out of our shared experiences. To it, we Associate Editor: Marie Buckley by exploring their stories. hope you will bring yourself and your ISSN: 1093-7528 willingness to share your life and what ©2001 Story Circle Network you have learned from it. If you wish, Copyrights to all contributed works What can I gain from the Network? remain with the authors. You will receive the following you may contribute some of your publications, information, and writing (poetry, prose, book reviews— opportunities. These things won’t be ask for a copy of our writer’s available all at once—we’re just getting guidelines). If you are a teacher or Membership Rates started! But as our membership grows, our group leader, you are invited to calendar activities will expand. You’ll get: your related events. One Year $24 US We also hope that many of you will $36 elsewhere four issues of the 16- to 22-page decide to participate by leading a Story newsletter, Story Circle Journal, with Circle in your community. It isn’t hard, Foreign Memberships: International Postal Money Order only, please ideas for writing additional chapters of and it’s enormously rewarding. Won’t your life story, plus poetry and brief you give it a try? personal essays from subscribers Editorial Address the opportunity to publish your How do I become a member? That’s the easiest part! You Story Circle Journal writing to the newsletter and other PO Box 1616, Network publications automatically become a member of the Network when you subscribe to Story Bertram TX 78605-1616 a network guide that will allow you to Circle Journal. Annual memberships directly contact members with interests are $24 in the United States and $36 Back Issues: Back issues are availa- and experiences similar to yours elsewhere. You will find a membership ble either as first-run or photocopies, (forthcoming, as the Network grows form at the back of this newsletter. for $5.50 each (includes first class and members send us their Please join us and share your story. postage). Canada, Mexico, and else- information) where: $8 each. a report on the activities of Story Circles across the country, in each Missed Issues: We try to ensure that issue of the newsletter Story Circle Journal arrives in your book reviews and a resource guide You’re on the Net? mailbox four times a year. If you listing groups, teachers, and miss an issue, send us a note and publications that are committed to So are we! we’ll mail you a replacement. helping women tell their stories (in Visit us at each newsletter) Change of address: If you move, www.storycircle.org please tell us. Unless you send us www.owlcircle.org your new address, we can’t guarantee that you’ll receive your newsletter! Volume 5 Number 1, February 2001 Page 3 LifeStory Briefs: Practical How-to for Memoir Writers Wring About Disaster All of us have stories to tell about pain and the same kind of swiftness and power. Let us rejoice in our grief and loss—about disaster. Sometimes sufferings, knowing them these stories are so deeply, so profoundly “Some kind of resolution….” to be symptoms of our disturbing that they echo through all the One of the things I like best about Nancy’s potential health. Pain is a corridors of our lives. The loss of a beloved crisis memoir is the way in which she moves script, and as we learn to home to fire, or the devastation of a country by from loss and pain to resolution. In the read it, we grow in self- war. The death of a child, a lover, a spouse, a paragraph that begins “People have often knowledge. parent. A debilitating illness, an accident. wondered…,” Nancy moves forward, out of —M.C. Richards Human life is a kaleidoscope of joy and pain, the moment of gut-wrenching, life-changing of sun and shadow.