When was the last time you wrote a letter? More than ever, the personal letter has become a mainstay in conversing about race, immigration, identity, and other intersectionalities. Your personal stories matter because your voice is a tool to harness social, political, and cultural change for a just and equitable society. This workshop will teach writers how to use their personal stories via writing letters to create sustainable community change, write to elected officials, and remind society that the personal is political. This short workshop will focus on setting, scene, plot structure, and narrative voice. The class will begin by reading short excerpts of published letters. Participants will then learn how to apply techniques of storytelling to nonfiction letter writing and practice those techniques using guided writing prompts. The goal of this workshop is to inspire writers to use their talent to effectively and impactfully share their stories.

Leslie-Ann Murray is a writer and teacher living in New York City. She teaches English at Montclair Kimberley Academy, an independent school in New Jersey. She is the founder of Brown Girl Book Lover, an inclusive book-loving space, where writers and book lovers converge. In this literary platform, she reviews books and interviews diverse writers who are shifting the literary canon. Murray received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Rutgers University.