Thank you Kyla Bayang, Kristin Rapinac, Linda Teather, Dean Kirby, Susan Viuker Lieberman, Lauren Maguire, Bill Moore, Giovanna Solimando, Maida Korte, Dr. Mary M. Marshall, Marci KR, Nonu TuiSamoa, Shauna K. Hunt, Judith Dianne Ely, and so many more for taking the time on this Sunday (or Monday morning) to join us. These are special ways for a community to come together to inspire, encourage, and support one another. Forgive me if I missed some of you or the topics and questions you asked in the chat online. Feel free to drop your questions in the comments below.
A Gifted Storyteller in our Midst
This community has created remarkable opportunities to speak with and get to know remarkable talent. I had the privilege today to talk to Annette Gendler of The Past and the Present. Her work caught my eye soon after joining Substack, but I was smitten when I heard her story about a project she’d started with her siblings on the 40th anniversary of her dad’s passing.
You’ll hear her retell that story at about 17 minutes into the recording, but that’s just one story. What you’ll hear in this recording are stories layered on stories and an appreciation for their power.
I especially appreciated the comments from Kristin Rapinac and Mary Marshall in the livestream chat that triggered a discussion about languages and how we’re producing artifacts for our descendants. I hope you enjoy the discussion as much as I did.
Resources
During our conversation, we touched on so many interesting external references. Let me start with Annette’s published books:
Her memoir, Jumping Over Shadows:
Her book about writing stories, How to Write Compelling Stories from Family History:
Following our discussion, she also referenced a post about what led to the writing of this book, we may pick this up in a subsequent conversation, stay tuned for that.
Finally, near the end of our conversation, we briefly touched on her children’s book, Natalie and the Nazi Soldiers, based on her mother-in-law’s life as a hidden child in France during the Holocaust. This opened up a larger topic of how an illustrated story adds complexity and context to storytelling that, as an author, she had not anticipated. She held up the book and a few pages as examples. Since those are hard to see in the video, she kindly shared screenshots here:
A children’s book was so different that she’s written a few posts about. You’ll find these on her author’s site:
On reading Annette’s book late last year, I marveled at how I’ve generally skipped over the whole craft of writing stories in Projectkin materials. I think that relates to my own insecurities on the topic. Let’s fix that.
This conversation has reminded me how the guiding hand of an expert can make you feel comfortable with a perceived weakness. We’ll be coming back to this sort of thing a little more often. Thank you all for your enthusiastic engagement and support for each other. That’s a magic ingredient here.
