Patten Free Library welcomes Bath native Elizabeth Peavey for a free memoir workshop from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, March 28. The morning session is open to the general public, and the afternoon workshop is limited to 12 participants who reside in the library’s service area and who are 18 or older.

Whether knee-deep in personal history or looking for a way to begin, this workshop gives writers the tools and guidance necessary to move forward. Peavey will examine the history and nature of memoir and discuss the tricky issue of truth vs. fact. The group will talk about the way in which imagination informs memory, how the easiest “truths” are not always the best ones and consider new ways to approach being honest with the reader. From there, the group will get down to the nuts and bolts: how to develop a clear thesis, how to establish voice, where to start and end the narrative and how to make a new world come alive for the reader through sharp prose and vivid detail. Then the group will examine these things in their own writing through rewarding workshopping sessions.

Elizabeth Peavey is a Portland-based writer, teacher and performer. Her one-woman show, My Mother’s Clothes Are Not My Mother, has played to soldout houses across Maine since 2011 and was awarded the 2013 Maine Literary Award for Best Drama. Her latest book, Glorious Slow Going: Maine Stories of Art, Adventure and Friendship, was a Maine Literary Awards finalist. She is also the author of Outta My Way: An Odd Life Lived Loudly and of Maine & Me, which was awarded the MLA for Best Mainethemed Book. Her writing is frequently featured in Down East magazine, where she has been a contributing editor since 1997. Her humor column, “Outta My Yard,” can be found at thebollard.com. She has taught her highly popular memoir and personal-essay workshops for Maine Writers

& Publishers Alliance since the days of quill and parchment. She was a public speaking lecturer at the University of Southern Maine for 20 years and also taught creative nonfiction at the University of Maine at Farmington. She is a frequent guest lecturer and speaker at schools, libraries and associations around the state. Most recently, she served as writer in residence at Bay Path College in Longmeadow, Massachusetts.

Call the Patten Free Library Information Services desk at 443-5141 ext. 12 for more information and to register.