Popular writing classes return with sessions on personal essays and poetry
Our urge to revisit memories is a simple twitch of being alive: our hearts beat, our lungs breathe, our minds look back. But what truths we find can be evasive and ever-changing. What do these memories mean, anyway?
Here at the Wairarapa Library Service we offer a solution: get the past on the page and the truth—or a truth, at least!—will emerge. Our popular online writing classes return for 2022 with sessions dedicated to personal essay and poetry, two memory-driven genres with great power to sort our pasts.
Taught by WLS Reading Champion Dan Keane, the sessions will offer writerly insight, useful craft tricks, a warm community, and a fresh dose of inspiration to make art and meaning from our lives. As the late Joan Didion once wrote, “I don’t know what I think until I write it down.”
No experience is necessary, and all classes are free. Each session will be offered twice: attend either Wednesdays 7-8:30 p.m. OR Thursdays 10-11:30 a.m. on the dates below.
- Writing the Personal Essay: Characters & Lies, March 16-17 and 23-24.
- From Memory to Poetry, April 13-14 and 20-21.
- Writing the Personal Essay: Revelations & Arguments, May 11-12 and 18-19.
All classes will meet online via Zoom—it’s easy and 100% Omicron proof, and we’ll talk you through every step. Visit wls.org.nz/creativewritingclasses to sign up. Come join us!
New Saturday hours: Our Saturday hours at all WLS branches will shift to 9:30 am-1 pm from 5 March to better match customer demand. Come see us!
Evening Book Club meets online 7-8 p.m. on the first Wednesday of every month. Visit wls.org.nz/eveningbookclub to see our upcoming titles and sign up.
Staff Pick for March: New Zealand’s reputation as a safe place to ride out an apocalypse gets a delightful twist in Kate Sawyer’s The Stranding (UK), nominated for the Costa Book Awards. As headlines darken, Ruth abandons a hectic city life to work with whales in faraway Aotearoa. When the unthinkable happens, she finds herself climbing into the mouth of a beached whale alongside a stranger—and reemerges into an entirely new world. A hopeful take on the end of days reminiscent of Emil St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven—reserve your copy today at wls.org.nz!
