Unmuted Spotlights the Connective Power of Personal Storytelling

Seattle-based memoir author and writing coach Ingrid Ricks recently led a personal storywriting workshop for LGBTQIA seniors and their allies at Seattle’s GenPRIDE center. The workshop built a community of writers and generated an intriguing anthology of fourteen stories entitled Unmuted: Stories of Courage and Resilience from the GenPRIDE Community, released in October to celebrate LGBTQIA History Month. Join us at 6:30 p.m. on Wed. Nov. 18 for readings from Unmuted Stories. Recently, Ricks shared her thoughts with us here on the publication:

I know it sounds simplistic, but I’m convinced that personal storytelling is the key to world peace.

It was the community-building power of personal narrative — along with its ability to foster healing and empathy in today’s deeply-divided world — that excited me most about partnering with GenPRIDE Executive Director, Steven Knipp, to spearhead its ongoing writing workshop.

Our stories humanize us, connect us, heal us. I’ve seen this play out thousands of times with students of every age, and I witnessed the transformative power of personal storytelling once again this past year in working with the GenPRIDE community.

Though united under the LGBTQIA+ umbrella, the strangers who gathered for the first GenPRIDE writing workshop couldn’t have appeared more different. What did a middle-aged black man have in common with a white transgender woman in her 70’s? What did a retired lesbian English teacher have in common with a gay man struggling to live with AIDS? What did I, a white straight woman, have in common with the LGBTQIA+ community? Our stories.

Write into Fall!

Seattle Writes returns this Fall-virtually! We will be offering a slate of live two-hour classes, short video lectures, and Write with Hugo House writing circles. Read on to find out more, or go directly to our Seattle Writes event calendar for more details!

Attend Online Writing Classes

Seasoned writers are sharing their knowledge and skill through our online classes. This year you can explore writing and learn about the South Asian poetic form of ghazals with Shankar Narayan. Have a novel experience. Take all or some of Karen Finneyfrock’s four sessions on novel writing. Get personal with Laura Da’ by creating poems of memory and place. With Sonora Jha you can discover or uncover what you have to say by writing a personal essay. Register through Seattle Public Library (coming soon!).

Write On!: Get Graphic! Go Comic!

Are you drawn to drawing your own world? Do you picture rows of frames, imagine scenes, come up with your own cast of characters and play those scenes out in your mind? Is there, somewhere near, a messy pile of graphic novels or comic books that you have poured over a hundred times or more? Have you, ever, imagined that your work could, one day, be found in one of those piles?

KRAK! WHOOSH!! SPLAT!!!! There is an art to Making Comics. Get graphic! Go comic!! Try your hand at Cartooning and Creating Comics from Start to Finish. See what Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics is all about. Learn The Art of Urban Sketching. Pour over Manga for the Beginner. Then, get busy composing Words for Pictures and splash each page with speech bubbles that balloon and go pop! A Glossary of Comics Terminology and the Letterform Archive are essential tools to put in your power pack.

Write On!: Writers Writing Life

You’ve read their work, admire their writing and anticipate reading their next book. Have you ever wondered, from whence did those words spring forth? Some readers are curious about the forces that give shape to a writer’s identity. They are intrigued about the circumstances that were foundational to the development of an author’s work.

Write On!: Publish Your Writing

Check! You did it, you’ve done the hardest part. You’ve taken an idea, a slither of an idea and honed it into a strong piece of writing. Now, you’re ready to send it out into the world.

This brings you to another beginning. This beginning is just as crucial and just as important as completing that piece of writing. Now comes the process of finding the journal, magazine, publisher or website that will accept your work.

You have to start somewhere! There are more options available today, than ever, for getting your writing read, accepted and published in print, online, by others or by publishing it yourself.

Publishing moves a work into the world; thoughts travel on paper, across screens where ideas can be talked about, contemplated by friends, family, colleagues and strangers.

So, where to start? It might be prudent to consult the Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Becoming a Writer and follow that with The Forest for the Trees: An Editor’s Advice to Writers.