Post #45 – Women’s Memoirs, News – Kendra Bonnett and Matilda Butler
Memoir Writing and Personal Historians Conference
Greetings from Victoria. In a few hours, I board a plane that will wing me back to San Jose. I’ve been in British Columbia, in the beautiful town of Victoria for the 16th Annual Conference of the Association of Personal Historians (APH).
Kendra and I have known about APH since 2006. However, we were in the early days of helping women tell their stories and decided we’d better focus on our teaching materials, website development, and business plan first. Then, partly through our association with Paula Yost at Story Circle Network and Pat McNees at APH, we had an opportunity to propose two Writing Alchemy workshops for this year’s conference.
By now you’re probably wondering where’s Kendra in all these picture? Kendra began her drive from Maine to California in her bright red mini-Cooper convertible. (I’m fairly certain the top was up.) She got as far as Connecticut when life got complicated. Realizing that she really needed to return home to take care of some business, I told her to not worry. “I can do the workshops by myself.” She agonized for another night and finally agreed that she’d have to miss this conference she’d planned on attending for months.
So the solo pictures will be transformed into pictures of your dynamic duo Women’s Memoirs team next year when the conference will be held in Las Vegas in late October. If you want to help others tell their life stories in print, in video, or in audio, then this is the organization for you. Sessions include writing, marketing, video production, and book publishing workshops.
One additional valuable feature of the conference is called Speed Coaching. On Saturday afternoon, I met for 10 minutes each with people who wanted to ask questions about blogs and websites. Here you see Laura Blumenthal, organizer of this year’s Speed Coaching as we had a wrap-up conversation about the success of the conference in addressing the needs of the members.
This proclamation from the mayor of Victoria will give you a little more information about APH. If you are interested, you can go to their website or contact me. I’d be glad to tell you more about the association.
