Join the Arkansas Arts Council for a special, virtual writing workshop from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, May 15, via Zoom.
“Women Writing Stories: Messages from Our Mothers and other Women in Our Lives” will be a celebration of women, their lives, their voices and their stories. The writing workshop will help women writers hone their craft, discover how to tell the stories of women around them and preserve the voices of their mothers, daughters, sisters and friends. The workshop will include tips on writing short memoirs, good-writing techniques and conquering the fear involved with sharing our lives.
The event is free, but registration is required through Eventbrite at https://www.eventbrite.com/e/women-writing-stories-anthology-workshop-registration-151569421219.
Participants from the previous “Still I Rise” writing workshops this past March have the opportunity to send in their stories to janet.perkins@arkansas.gov a week beforehand to get feedback from writing coach and workshop facilitator Janis F. Kearney. The review will be provided back to the writer before the workshop. New participants are invited to attend the workshop and share their own stories of their mothers or other women in their lives.
Kearney will guide participants through writing exercises and answer questions about writing and publishing. Participants have the opportunity to submit their stories to the Arkansas Arts Council to be included in an anthology, which will feature short memoirs on the Arkansas Arts Council’s website.
Kearney is a writer, publisher, journalist and instructor. She was inducted into the Arkansas Writers Hall of Fame in 2016. She has penned several books and founded a publishing company, called Writing our World Publishing, or “Wow! Publishing.”
Kearney fell in love with the sound and feel of words as a child in the southeast Arkansas Delta. She creates stories about hers and other Southerners’ lives through short stories, memoir, biography and fiction.
She served as publisher of the Arkansas State Press founded by civil rights legend Daisy Gatson Bates. Kearney served eight years in the Clinton Presidency as a Whitehouse media affairs specialist, then as the director of public communications for the U.S. Small Business Administration. She served the last five years of Bill Clinton’s presidency as the personal diarist to President Clinton. Her two passions are writing and the Celebrate! Maya Project, a nonprofit she and a handful of women created after the death of the iconic Maya Angelou in 2014.
For more information, contact Janet Perkins at 501-324-9775 or at janet.perkins@arkansas.gov.
