ARTS AND CULTURE

• Libraries such as Middle Country Public Library and other community-based organizations sponsor Herstory writing workshops for their constituents as a component of the library’s personal enrichment program. Building Bridges Through Our Tales is available in English, Spanish and bilingual models in short-term or ongoing series.

• Roundtable discussions with Herstory’s founder/artistic director and Herstory members can be staged with arts councils and other sponsors committed to featuring the obstacles and opportunities involved in memoir writing as a serious art form.

• Herstory has been an integral part of Bay Shore High School’s nationally recognized Ethnic Pen Student Writers’ Conference, offering memoir-writing workshops for mainstream and bilingual students. Tailor-made to fit the annual conference theme while teaching students to understand how writing can enhance their lives, Herstory workshops such as Breaking Barriers: Shaping Lives Through Our Tales, and Building Bridges, underscore Herstory’s ability to reach out to the community to foster self awareness and effect change.

• New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) supports Herstory’s work in the Patchogue-Medford Public Library writing workshop, at which Latina women from the community come together with professors of Modern Languages, librarians and social justice workers.  In partnership with Bridgehampton National Bank, NYSCA also supports work with women writing in Spanish on Long Island’s East End.

• Herstory’s day-long concentrated workshops can help professional writers apply proven literary techniques to overcome obstacles and explore tactics for proceeding with their own writing.

• Canio’s Book Store, Jefferson’s Ferry Life Care Community and the Suffolk Chapter of National Organization for Women hosted readings of new memoirs by Herstory writers in their eighties, while various universities and houses of worship hosted readings for prison project and Latina writers.