Picture This: AAPI Storytelling Through Images 

"If a picture is worth a thousand words, there's a lot that writers can learn from photographs. By learning how to think more like a photographer, we can draw inspiration from images and learn to use those techniques to mine details about our subjects, and ultimately, create writing that really drops the reader into an experience."

- Grace Hwang Lynch, Writing Through the Lens

Images can be a remarkable tool for creative nonfiction writers, and in a broader fashion than you might think. Photographers often make similar choices of what to include when composing images, and the elements that make a picture memorable and meaningful are often the result of choices that the casual observer doesn’t even realize the person behind the camera is making. Photographs can be a powerful tool to help you tap into what is happening, but also to show the reader why these scenes are taking place.

In this 90-minute webinar, we will examine samples of memoir or essay that draw upon photographs to deepen scene and character, and you will learn how to use these techniques in your own storytelling. Please bring a photo or two for inspiration, as this will be an interactive class with opportunities to analyze images and practice writing using the techniques we will learn.

Grace Hwang Lynch is a storyteller who works in journalism, essays, and photography. Her work can be found on outlets including Tin House, Catapult, and NPR and in the anthology Nonwhite and Woman: 131 Micro Essays on Being in the World (Woodhall Press). She is currently writing a memoir about Taiwanese American food and family. Follow her on Instagram @gracehwanglynch or at gracehwanglynch.com

Facilitator, Sheila Navarro

Sheila Navarro (she/her) was born in Cavite, Philippines, grew up in Suisun City, California and is now a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada. Her work has been supported by VONA, Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, PAWA, and SF LitQuake.  Sheila has published work in {m}aganda magazine,  SF Culture Trip, Mercury News and others.  

This class is appropriate for ALL levels and forms of creative writing! All are welcome! 

WeWrite! wishes to thank the Black Mountain Institute at UNLV for their generous support of our program. BMI champions writers and storytellers through programs, fellowships, and community engagement. It makes space for meaningful collaborations and conversations and understands service as vital. It asks questions about access, the environment, and labor. BMI finds its home in Las Vegas—a place of hospitality in the middle of a desert. Between the manufactured and natural, urban and wide expanse, built and rebuilt, bounty and scarcity, we live within narratives of destruction and preservation. From the brightest spot on the planet, Black Mountain Institute amplifies writing and artistic expression to connect us to each other in the Las Vegas Valley, the Southwest, and beyond. @BlackMtnInst