Autobiographical writing is not new as a literary genre, but never before has it been so essential to so many: documenting with words one’s past and present experience is today configured as a path of personal growth and genuine therapy. An expressive form requiring no great rhetorical skills, autobiography (memoir, diary, essay) serves the writer and the community: autobiography sorts out memories and stores them in language, offers cogent reflections in hindsight, and helps define one’s identity and create a sense of belonging.
Epale Italia has been following and curating many initiatives on issues related to self-narration for many years. It has organized this interactive workshop to present six authors of inspiring autobiographical stories. Three are finalists of DiMMi, (Diari Multimediali Migranti), the national competition promoted by the Archivio della Memoria di Pieve Santo Stefano, a center of research in this field; two are Epale Ambassadors who have successfully participated in Community Stories, a European initiative born in difficult months of the pandemic to share concrete experiences of creativity and resilient pedagogy in the field of adult education; finally, we will meet the author whose personal narrative of her return to school in adulthood is both humble and inspiring.
The public will be encouraged to actively participate with the authors in the workshop with small writing activities led by an expert in autobiographical methods.