Tag: Ames Writers Collective

Author Spotlight Featuring Deb Kline

Join us for our Author Spotlight featuring Deb Kline, author and singer songwriter, who will read excerpts, lyrics, and poems from her book Forgetting to Remember: A Healer’s Journey of Surviving and Thriving. She will share her process as a nontraditional writer and take questions from the audience.

As an Ames author and entrepreneur, Deb Kline shares her passion for thriving beyond trauma by inspiring others to discover their inner healer. Her music, art, writing, and holistic practice, Wellspring Wellness, LLC, collectively expand the ability of individuals and communities to hold, honor, and validate difficult stories while celebrating kindred survivors.

Copies of Forgetting to Remember will be available for purchase and author signing.

This event is held in partnership with the Ames Writers Collective and KHOI Community Radio.

Writing A Life Into Memoir—An introductory workshop on craft

Join author, Tom Montgomery Fate for an introductory workshop that teaches craft strategies to mine your life stories. Points shared during this workshop are useful for other genres such as fiction and poetry. Strategies shared during our time together are intended to inspire your writing. This workshop will not include in-depth writing, however bring a pen and paper or laptop for brief generative exercises and to capture your ideas.

Tom Montgomery Fate is a professor emeritus at the College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, Illinois where he taught creative writing and literature courses. He is the author of six books of creative nonfiction, including The Long Way Home: Detours and Discoveries, a Travel Memoir. A regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, his essays have appeared in the Boston Globe, Baltimore Sun, The Iowa Review, and many others. His essays have aired on NPR, PRI and Chicago Public Radio.

To register for this FREE event, click here. The workshop will be held in the Danfoss Room at the Ames Public Library.

Provided in partnership with the Ames Writers Collective and the Ames Public Library

Categories
Author

Kris Abel-Helwig

Kris Abel-Helwig

What’s your genre?
Picture books, YA, currently modern crime fiction

Are you published?
Self published

What inspired you to become a writer?
After being diagnosed with breast cancer and then witnessing the devastation of 9.11.2001, I wanted to put into words and illustrations the desire to nurture and protect by growing roots and giving wings to my children and those of my family and friends. After substitute teaching for eight years, I began to write young adult novels with clever protagonists and quirky casts of characters inspired by dreams and the high school experiences of my three sons, as well as my own. In addition, a playlist of the music I listened to while writing enhances the reader’s experiences and sets the tone for each chapter.

What author(s) do you admire and how have they inspired your writing?
Picture books: Maurice Sendak, Mercer Mayer, Sandra Boynton, Eric Carle
Young adult: J.K. Rowling for showing loving family and friendship relationships, her world-building imagination, and the ability to drop breadcrumbs while weaving tales that engaged adolescents, teens, and adults.
Mystery: Louise Penny because of her wonderful character development

Name three of your favorite books and their authors
Beach Music by Pat Conroy
Still Life by Louise Penny
On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft by Stephen King

What’s one thing readers should know about you?
Sarcastic characters run amuck in my head and converse with me and each other when I’m walking my pups in the woods or swimming laps.

What one piece of advice would you give a budding writer?
Write your character’s unique story, not the one someone else tells you to write.

Author Bio
As a twenty-one year breast cancer survivor, Kris champions early detection and thriving happily ever after. Her husband is a professor at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa, where they live with a herd of cats and dogs. Their three grown sons are active-duty military, stationed all over the world in fun places to visit and photograph. Visit Kris here.