Life Stories Workshop
Category :: Writing & Publishing
Address
PO Box 603
Potts Point NSW 2011
Potts Point NSW 2011
Tel
(02) 9332 2787
Do you want to write about your life, someone else's life, life in general?
Then life writing is your genre. It includes autobiography, memoir, travel and sojourn writing, narrative non-fiction, biography and even the personal essay. It is a way of exploring your own experience of life, other people's lives and places, topics and themes. You can write about your year in South America, about your mother's childhood in Romania, about your olive farm in outback Australia, about growing up in the suburbs - or about any of the experiences of life.
Life writing is inclusive. Everyone has a story of his or her own experience of being in the world. Whatever your achievements or challenges or pain, your story is worth telling - and worth telling in a powerful and absorbing way.
Time after time, the thousands of Life Stories I have read and worked on reveal that each individual being is miraculous and unique, and that at the same time we share so much as we travel throughout lives.
In life writing, you are facing yourself as much as if you were sailing solo around the world, so it is a pursuit for the adventurous. Memoir and autobiography are not straightforward historical records or exercises in self-justification, but are true journeys of exploration, exciting and sometimes confronting. There is joy and revelation and the creative struggle to find the words to do justice to your experience.
Patti Miller, founder of the Life Stories Workshop, is an established writer and Australia's most experienced life-writing teacher. Her books have been published by Allen & Unwin and Random House. Her passionate and supportive approach to life writing has grown out of her love and knowledge of the art of writing and literature and her fascination with the stories of our lives. She has taught writing workshops for more than twenty years, specialising in life writing since 1991 and is the author of the best selling Writing Your Life and The Memoir Book.
Life Stories Services will show you what Patti can do to help you get started on the journey of life writing, or if you have already started, guide you along the most rewarding paths. She knows how to help you write the best possible autobiographical or memoir manuscript. See Clients for a growing list of writers with whom she has worked and who have been successfully published.
About Patti Miller
Patti’s approach to life writing has grown out of her love and knowledge of the art of writing and literature as well as her lifelong fascination with the way stories construct our sense of self. Because life story writing also has a psychological and a spiritual dimension – it can be both healing and awakening - she understands the importance of the magical* art and craft of the word and the story. She is a writer and knows that there is a transforming power in the discipline of writing, which lifts the stories of our lives out of history and therapy and into Art.
* It is no accident that words and incantations are both ‘spelled’
She is author of five books:
- The best-selling Writing Your Life (writing text) A&U; 1994 new ed 2001,
- The Last One Who Remembers (memoir) A&U 1997;
- Child (novel) A&U 1998;
- Whatever The Gods Do (memoir) Vintage Random House, 2003;
- The Memoir Book (writing text) A&U 2007.
She has been published in literary magazines since the late 1970s. Her articles and personal essays, including travel writing, are also widely published in national newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald, in particular The Good Weekend magazine, and The Australian. She is also included in Some Girls Do A&U 2007, an anthology of Australian women writers' short stories and memoirs about being a teenager.
Her teaching and manuscript advice to others is not theoretical – it comes directly from her own daily experience of the joys and challenges of her own writing.
At the same time, she has a wide knowledge of literature and writing practice, which creates a well-informed context for her guidance. She studied English and Education for a year at the University of Auckland, has a BA (Communications) from U.T.S 1981, majoring in Writing and Literary Studies, two years at the University of Sydney studying Australian Literature and Writing, and a MA in Writing from U.T.S 1994.
She is also experienced and skilled at communicating her knowledge of writing, with more than fifteen years experience in teaching life writing and eight years as a Lecturer in Writing and in Literature at the University of Technology, Sydney and theUniversity of Western Sydney from 1984 to 1992. There, she taught widely in both disciplines – from Experimental and Creative Writing to Professional Writing and from Early American Literature, through Post-Colonial Literatures and Satire to Australian Drama.
In teaching Creative Writing, she became fascinated with the stories of peoples’ lives and decided to design a course specifically for people who wanted to concentrate on life writing. She took the course to Varuna Writers’ House, Australia’s national writers’ residential centre, and it was an immediate success. And so it was in 1991, Life Stories Workshop was born.
Over the years since then, Patti has offered Life Writing, not only at Writers Centres around Australia ( Sydney, Armidale, Byron Bay, Melbourne, Adelaide amongst many others) and for the University of Sydney’s Continuing Education program, but for numerous community groups. She has offered specialised workshops for Aboriginal groups, women’s refuges, environmental groups, mental health outpatients, migrants and refugees and personal groups such as a circle of grieving friends. She has conducted a series of workshops supported by NSW Ministry of the Arts for country NSW and another series funded by Creative Cultures for migrants and refugees in Sydney’s west.
Patti also conducts Life Writing/Memoir retreat courses in Paris every year in October and in Fiji every second year. Writers can escape the demands of ordinary life and joyfully concentrate on their writing under Patti’s teaching and guidance.
Patti participates in the writing community and is invited to Writing Festivals and Readings. A selection of events includes:
- Harold Park Hotel readings – 1980’s;
- Women Writers’ Weekend 1994 (State Library);
- Spring Writing NSW Writers’ Centre 1994;
- Byron Bay Writers Festival 1997 and 2003;
- Society of Women Writers 1994, 1997, 2003, 2006;
- Song of the Winds Festival 1997, 1998;
- Campbelltown Writers Week 1998; Go Girl Festival 1999;
- Varuna – 10 year of Life Stories 2001;
- Café de la Mairie (Paris) – reading 2001;
- National Biography Awards, State Library 2002;
- Red Wheelbarrow Bookshop (Paris) 2003 - reading;
- Sydney Writers’ Festival, 1989 and 2003;
- Ashfield Library - reading 2003;
- Gleebooks – reading 2003;
- Australian Publishers Association – 2003, 04, 06;
- Lyceum Club, 2005;
- Newtown Writers’ Tent 2006
- Sydney Writers’ Festival 2007 – masterclasses and panel
- West Ryde Library 2007 – reading and seminar
- NSW State Library 2007 Talk
- Wordstorm –Northern Territory Writers’ Festival 2008.
She has also been on judging panels:
- U.T.S Short Story Competition 1993, 94, 95;
- Varuna/Creative Cultures Regional Writing Competition 1994;
- Varuna Fellowship Assessments 1993, 96;
- Society of Women Writers Writing Competition 1997.
Her own areas of writing interest are centred on: memory/narrative spell / narrative and the self/construction of meaning / constructing the self / memory and knowledge/ the borders between fiction and fact / cicada dreaming - the creative process / writing for the senses – body, landscape, place/ neuroscience, memory and consciousness/ Eastern philosophy and consciousness/ human love/ the mystery of family/chance and luck.
Then life writing is your genre. It includes autobiography, memoir, travel and sojourn writing, narrative non-fiction, biography and even the personal essay. It is a way of exploring your own experience of life, other people's lives and places, topics and themes. You can write about your year in South America, about your mother's childhood in Romania, about your olive farm in outback Australia, about growing up in the suburbs - or about any of the experiences of life.
Life writing is inclusive. Everyone has a story of his or her own experience of being in the world. Whatever your achievements or challenges or pain, your story is worth telling - and worth telling in a powerful and absorbing way.
Time after time, the thousands of Life Stories I have read and worked on reveal that each individual being is miraculous and unique, and that at the same time we share so much as we travel throughout lives.
In life writing, you are facing yourself as much as if you were sailing solo around the world, so it is a pursuit for the adventurous. Memoir and autobiography are not straightforward historical records or exercises in self-justification, but are true journeys of exploration, exciting and sometimes confronting. There is joy and revelation and the creative struggle to find the words to do justice to your experience.
Patti Miller, founder of the Life Stories Workshop, is an established writer and Australia's most experienced life-writing teacher. Her books have been published by Allen & Unwin and Random House. Her passionate and supportive approach to life writing has grown out of her love and knowledge of the art of writing and literature and her fascination with the stories of our lives. She has taught writing workshops for more than twenty years, specialising in life writing since 1991 and is the author of the best selling Writing Your Life and The Memoir Book.
Life Stories Services will show you what Patti can do to help you get started on the journey of life writing, or if you have already started, guide you along the most rewarding paths. She knows how to help you write the best possible autobiographical or memoir manuscript. See Clients for a growing list of writers with whom she has worked and who have been successfully published.
About Patti Miller
Patti’s approach to life writing has grown out of her love and knowledge of the art of writing and literature as well as her lifelong fascination with the way stories construct our sense of self. Because life story writing also has a psychological and a spiritual dimension – it can be both healing and awakening - she understands the importance of the magical* art and craft of the word and the story. She is a writer and knows that there is a transforming power in the discipline of writing, which lifts the stories of our lives out of history and therapy and into Art.
* It is no accident that words and incantations are both ‘spelled’
She is author of five books:
- The best-selling Writing Your Life (writing text) A&U; 1994 new ed 2001,
- The Last One Who Remembers (memoir) A&U 1997;
- Child (novel) A&U 1998;
- Whatever The Gods Do (memoir) Vintage Random House, 2003;
- The Memoir Book (writing text) A&U 2007.
She has been published in literary magazines since the late 1970s. Her articles and personal essays, including travel writing, are also widely published in national newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald, in particular The Good Weekend magazine, and The Australian. She is also included in Some Girls Do A&U 2007, an anthology of Australian women writers' short stories and memoirs about being a teenager.
Her teaching and manuscript advice to others is not theoretical – it comes directly from her own daily experience of the joys and challenges of her own writing.
At the same time, she has a wide knowledge of literature and writing practice, which creates a well-informed context for her guidance. She studied English and Education for a year at the University of Auckland, has a BA (Communications) from U.T.S 1981, majoring in Writing and Literary Studies, two years at the University of Sydney studying Australian Literature and Writing, and a MA in Writing from U.T.S 1994.
She is also experienced and skilled at communicating her knowledge of writing, with more than fifteen years experience in teaching life writing and eight years as a Lecturer in Writing and in Literature at the University of Technology, Sydney and theUniversity of Western Sydney from 1984 to 1992. There, she taught widely in both disciplines – from Experimental and Creative Writing to Professional Writing and from Early American Literature, through Post-Colonial Literatures and Satire to Australian Drama.
In teaching Creative Writing, she became fascinated with the stories of peoples’ lives and decided to design a course specifically for people who wanted to concentrate on life writing. She took the course to Varuna Writers’ House, Australia’s national writers’ residential centre, and it was an immediate success. And so it was in 1991, Life Stories Workshop was born.
Over the years since then, Patti has offered Life Writing, not only at Writers Centres around Australia ( Sydney, Armidale, Byron Bay, Melbourne, Adelaide amongst many others) and for the University of Sydney’s Continuing Education program, but for numerous community groups. She has offered specialised workshops for Aboriginal groups, women’s refuges, environmental groups, mental health outpatients, migrants and refugees and personal groups such as a circle of grieving friends. She has conducted a series of workshops supported by NSW Ministry of the Arts for country NSW and another series funded by Creative Cultures for migrants and refugees in Sydney’s west.
Patti also conducts Life Writing/Memoir retreat courses in Paris every year in October and in Fiji every second year. Writers can escape the demands of ordinary life and joyfully concentrate on their writing under Patti’s teaching and guidance.
Patti participates in the writing community and is invited to Writing Festivals and Readings. A selection of events includes:
- Harold Park Hotel readings – 1980’s;
- Women Writers’ Weekend 1994 (State Library);
- Spring Writing NSW Writers’ Centre 1994;
- Byron Bay Writers Festival 1997 and 2003;
- Society of Women Writers 1994, 1997, 2003, 2006;
- Song of the Winds Festival 1997, 1998;
- Campbelltown Writers Week 1998; Go Girl Festival 1999;
- Varuna – 10 year of Life Stories 2001;
- Café de la Mairie (Paris) – reading 2001;
- National Biography Awards, State Library 2002;
- Red Wheelbarrow Bookshop (Paris) 2003 - reading;
- Sydney Writers’ Festival, 1989 and 2003;
- Ashfield Library - reading 2003;
- Gleebooks – reading 2003;
- Australian Publishers Association – 2003, 04, 06;
- Lyceum Club, 2005;
- Newtown Writers’ Tent 2006
- Sydney Writers’ Festival 2007 – masterclasses and panel
- West Ryde Library 2007 – reading and seminar
- NSW State Library 2007 Talk
- Wordstorm –Northern Territory Writers’ Festival 2008.
She has also been on judging panels:
- U.T.S Short Story Competition 1993, 94, 95;
- Varuna/Creative Cultures Regional Writing Competition 1994;
- Varuna Fellowship Assessments 1993, 96;
- Society of Women Writers Writing Competition 1997.
Her own areas of writing interest are centred on: memory/narrative spell / narrative and the self/construction of meaning / constructing the self / memory and knowledge/ the borders between fiction and fact / cicada dreaming - the creative process / writing for the senses – body, landscape, place/ neuroscience, memory and consciousness/ Eastern philosophy and consciousness/ human love/ the mystery of family/chance and luck.
What people say about us ::
Patti Miller is the perfect navigator to accompany anyone embarking on the journey of discovery that is life writing…her voice is like that of a guiding friend, offering encouragement and support as well as practical advice.
Caroline Baum
The person who encouraged me to give my writing a go and taught me so much.
Jacinta Tynan
I’ve been given a gift from you which makes the mundane more than tolerable. Thank you so much for your expert help and guidance in accessing memories, writing stories and coping with life in general.
Claire Kelly
Thanks so much for those excellent comments. You're absolutely right, of course, about my fudging the real story… what you say about what it's really about is so true …. as you so perceptively observed… and thanks for your very reasonable fee.
Siobhan McHugh
I am so happy and grateful for the course. And your books.
Aurora Lopez
I am grateful to everyone who made a contribution… Firstly: author Patti Miller. I started writing the book while doing a Life Writing course with Patti. She later read a version of the ms and made many very valuable suggestions for improving it.
Annarosa Berman
In practical terms, your constructive feedback is probably the most important to the book… but after several years of writing in a near vacuum it was your praise that meant the most to me personally. It was a much needed boost to my confidence to have a respected editor give me such positive feedback - and confidence is a good thing when squaring up to a rewrite. I really appreciate that you applied your attention so generously.
S. J.
Magnificent course. My life has changed.
Peg Vernon
Heartfelt thanks for bringing me to this place… there were wonderful words at every turn – speeches and teaching.
Bob Yates
I found it (the course) the most exhilarating thing I have ever done…. Your warmth and understanding gave me an assurance and trust that I have never found in a public situation before.
Jacqueline McCormick
List of Courses ::
Writing in Paris
Writing in Paris
