Short-Form Memoir Writing with Barbara L. Morgenstern, Esq.
Oct 8, 15, Nov 12, 19, Dec 10, 17 @ 1 – 3:30 PM
$50 per workshop — attend one or as many as you like
Class size limited. Scholarships available — contact Barbara b@mymemoirgroup.com
Write a Memoir in 20 Minutes
All skill levels welcome. You only can do it right. Invest in your writing self. A great gift.
Facilitated by Cincinnati’s Barbara L. Morgenstern, a licensed attorney, former Miami (Ohio) University journalism faculty member and Cincinnati Post reporter. Reveal some of the most memorable writing of your life in a safe, positive and creative environment outside your regular box — in 20 minutes. Barbara’s creative workshops also serve businesses including Cincinnati’s booming AI firm Helium SEO, as well as small groups in in San Francisco, Tucson, Costa Rica, and the Loretta Motherhouse near Bardstown, Ky. Barbara studied extensively with renowned memoir writing instructor Nancy Aronie (“Memoir as Medicine,”) who has won accolades from Harvard and The Omega Institute.
I loved the prompts. Very thought provoking and left me with two writing pieces that feel they captured a very special moment in time/thoughts in my life.
I really appreciated the 20- minute writing time. At first, I wondered how much I could write in that period and if I would be able to make a coherent story. But the time was perfect (flew by for one and felt so long for the other.) It shows that time is always relative. I am so grateful for the chance to express myself and feel seen- it’s an absolute gift!
— Jordan Edelheit, Cincinnati & San Francisco
Barbara’s Biography
Memoir Examples
Website
Questions : b@mymemoirgroup.com
Bea Lantaff, 17, a Mariemont (Ohio) High School senior, joined us for an eight-week, 2023 summer workshop at The Barn.
This is her story.
Covid: A Teen Hits the Brick Wall
By Bea Lantaf
Covid.
When I hear the word, I hear her voice.
I smell the hand soap I used at the time she passed.
I taste those cherry- flavored Sweetart ropes from all the six-hour car rides from Cincinnati to Evansville, Ind.
Covid had its impact on many. But it didn’t just impact me. It hit me like a brick wall.
I remember looking at the news the day before my Grandma died of Covid.
The day before lockdown, I had just come from a cheer event and went to LaRosa’s pizza place down the street from Starbucks. The news said there were only 16 cases in Ohio. But something was up because the next day, as the last bell of eighth grade rang, kids were screaming with excitement about getting two weeks off.
Those two weeks turned into two years that rocked my world and still is having aftershocks.
When freshman year came, I had the option to go online all the way or in person. There were no vaccines out for 14 year olds yet, so I stayed online all year with no human interaction.
Now I am going into my senior year and I still feel like a middle schooler. I still write 2020 on assignments and forget I’m not 13.
People see the Covid death rates as a statistic. But losing my Grandma makes statistics seem irrelevant.
She had the biggest impact on my life so far, as I was closer to her than anyone else.
Her death also thrust me into a role I never could have anticipated, as I was the one who sometimes helped my devastated family navigate the aftermath of Grandma’s death.
They could not handle reading the unofficial will she left behind, really a little book where she wrote stories about her life and told us how to dress her for her funeral, things like that. As I read the little book aloud in the car to my family, I remember it felt as if the car were shrinking, somehow morphing into the small casket we had picked out.
Still, there was an upside. Those in my family still have not read the little book–they are too sad–so I’m glad I did.
Otherwise, we never would know that she liked poetry and that she and I share the same favorite flowers, white tulips.