This afternoon as the insistent blustery wind buffeted the magenta bougainvillea on our balcony overlooking Balmoral Beach in Sydney, I listened to an interview with Oxford University’s Jeremy Hughes and Virginia Woolf’s biographer, Hermione Lee. Jeremy asked Hermione whether writers can employ similar techniques to photographers to produce different images of the same subject. Hermione’s […]
Listening to the stories of our older people is for me, an enormous pleasure. I recently had the joy of helping a friend pack up her house and make a road trip interstate, returning home after 40 years to be with family in her dying days. I was inspired by her confidence and commitment to […]
I often mentor people who are writing their memoir and one of the questions they frequently ask me is: ‘How can I make my story more interesting?’ One way you can make your writing more compelling is to create vivid scenes full of sensory details. These scenes fuel a reader’s imagination and draw them into […]
Voice is integral to an individual’s identity, whether we write about someone else or ourselves. A person’s voice reveals a great deal and we make all sorts of assumptions about them because of this. In her chapter on voice in the book The Art of Memoir Mary Karr says, ‘a voice conjures the human who utters it.’ […]
I’m currently reading Working: Researching, Interviewing, Writing, by Robert A. Caro, the multi-Pulitzer Prize winning biographer of Robert Moses, who changed the urban landscape of New York with his massive bridges and freeways, and Lyndon Johnson, who succeeded Jack Kennedy as US President after JFK was assassinated. In his book, Caro says that a sense of […]
As Fathers’ Day approaches are you struggling to find the perfect gift for your dad or grandfather? Do they have enough socks and undies to last a lifetime and is their bathroom cabinet overflowing with aftershave you gave them as presents for the last few years? Have you thought of giving your father or grandfather […]
Virginia Woolf once said, ’How does one write biography?’ The famous writer struggled with how to write the biographies of other people as well as her own autobiography. She drafted her autobiography several times, but each version was different from its predecessor and sadly she ended her life before finishing what could have been her most important book. […]
One of the most challenging aspects of life story writing is bringing characters to life. Taking a real-life person, getting inside them and truly knowing them. One of a life writer’s responsibilities it to reveal the gap between the mask a person wears and their secret self. But how can a life writer cut through to […]
Life Stories Australia, the professional association representing life story writers and filmmakers, applauds the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety for considering how best to deliver aged care services to the increasing number of Australians living with dementia. There is an urgent need to introduce life story recording into aged care facilities as […]
MEDIA RELEASE Aged Care Royal Commission must support life story writing for people living with dementia Sydney, 18 March 2019 – Life Stories Australia, the professional association representing life story writers and filmmakers, applauds the Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety for considering how best to deliver aged care services to the increasing number of […]
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