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Contact: Alisyn Maggiora, Western Washington University Extended Education, at (360) 650-3717 or Alisyn.Maggiora@wwu.edu

BELLINGHAM – When Sara Geballe signed up for "Memory to Memoir,” she never dreamed it would lead to a new career path or her own business.

“I took Laura Kalpakian's wonderful course to fulfill a personal need for self-expression and to hone my creative writing skills,” Geballe said. “There was no commercial application whatsoever in my mind. But as I wrote chapter after chapter of my own memoir, I started to wonder if there might not be people in our community who would similarly like to tell and share their stories, but needed some help.”

Today, Geballe is the owner of a successful business, Memoir Crafters, which helps people who want to write and preserve their personal stories.

Western Washington University will offer a three-quarter memoir writing program starting Oct. 1 that is open to the general public through the University’s Extended Education system.

The program, open to community members, is designed to guide participants to become more sophisticated readers and accomplished writers as they build and develop a skill set over the course of three consecutive classes. Writers of all experience levels are welcome, whether they wish to create a book, a family history, a business or promotional material. Everyone has a story to tell – and “Memory to Memoir” well help participants tell their stories.

Participants will:

• Learn how to put the past on the page.
• Develop and enrich writing in a supportive environment.
• Expand written abilities, editing skills and palette of possibilities.

Each quarter’s class will include prompts to spark writing and insight, exercises to develop narrative voice and readings from selected modern memoirs as participants experiment with various ways to tell personal stories.

Participants will produce several fully developed and edited essays or chapters suitable for publication, including a piece to present at Village Books upon completion of the program.

Course themes progress from “Ignition: Memory Sparking Imagination” to “Development: Giving Narrative Voice to the Past” to “Expand and Edit: Structuring the Past for the Page and Presentation.”

All three courses are taught by award-winning Laura Kalpakian, the acclaimed author of ten novels and three collections of short fiction.

Past participant Joe Nolting gives his experience with “Memory to Memoir” a five-star rating, in part because of Kalpakian’s “superb guidance.”

“I have greatly improved my composition skills, developed a serious discipline for the craft of writing and become closely connected with Bellingham’s large and supportive writing community.” Nolting said. “I strongly recommend this course for anyone who enjoys writing and has stories to tell.”

Classes will meet from 6-9 p.m. once weekly for eight weeks each term on Western’s campus. Participants can register online or with mail-in registration forms that can be found online, and an information session will be held at 5:30 p.m. Tues., June 11, at Village Books in Fairhaven.

For more information, visit , call (360) 650-3308 or email ExtendedEd@wwu.edu.