Writing about Family Heirlooms with Duane Roen

Family heirlooms offer rich opportunities for writing about family history. They bring back memories of our experiences with the family members whom we associate with them. For this session, we will discuss our heirlooms—either the physical objects themselves or our mental images of them. In this workshop, we will also engage in writing activities for seeing the descriptive and narrative details found in those heirlooms.In the first session, we will discuss the topic, generate some ideas for writing, and then offer feedback on those ideas.  In the second session, we will share revised drafts of our writing about the topic, and we will again offer feedback. In the third session, we will share more polished versions of our writing, and again will provide feedback. For the second and third sessions, it’s fine to be there just to listen to others’ share their writing and to offer feedback on it. And if you’re not able to revise you work for the second and third sessions, you can tell us—if you wish—what thoughts you have about revising your draft in the future. Or you could bring a draft of something else that you’ve written, and we can offer some feedback.  In short, we’re very flexible.Dates of series: December 5, 12 and 19 from 1:30-3:30pm

Meet your instructor: Duane RoenDuane Roen has been tracing his roots since his teenage years, building a database with more than 32,000 ancestors. He and his wife, Maureen Roen, have also been recording their family history since 1978 by writing more than 19,000 daily journal entries on their children and other family members. Combining his professional and personal interests, Duane worked with colleagues to establish courses on writing and recording family history at Arizona State University. He also is founding coordinator of the Project for Writing and Recording Family History in the College of Integrative Sciences and Arts at ASU.