A Conversation with Your Ancestors
November 18 @ 6:30 pm – 8:30 pm EST
A Creative Writing Workshop
This hands-on session offers the tools of creative writing, especially poetry and flash fiction, to develop a deeper understanding of our ancestors. Writer Pauletta Hansel will share prompts and tips she used in writing about 14 generations of her foremothers for her book, Understory: A Women’s History of Appalachia, University Press of Kentucky, 2026. Participants will have to opportunity to write and share writing during the sessions.
In advance of the first session, please choose an ancestor or group of ancestors you would like to write about. Write a letter to others in the workshop about them, including why you have chosen them, plus three things you know and three things you don’t know about them. Then during class, choose around 500-750 from your letter to share aloud.
About Pauletta
Pauletta Hansel is a poet, memoirist, teacher and editor. Her latest book is Understory: A Women’s History of Appalachia (University Press of Kentucky, 2026). Awards include the 2026 Judy Gaines Young Book Award, the 2023 Poetry Society of Virginia North American Book Award, and , winner of the 2017 Weatherford Award for Appalachian Poetry. She was Cincinnati’s first Poet Laureate from April 2016-March 2018 and Writer-in-Residence for the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County, Thomas More University, and WordPlay Cincy.
Pauletta Hansel’s eleven poetry collections include Will There Also Be Singing?, Heartbreak Tree, Friend, Coal Town Photograph and Palindrome. Her writing has been featured in Southern Humanities Review, Oxford American, Rattle, Still: The Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Appalachian Journal, American Life in Poetry, Verse Daily and Poetry Daily, among others. Pauletta leads community poetry workshops and retreats in the Greater Cincinnati area and beyond. She is past managing editor of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, the literary publication of Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative. Pauletta received her MFA from Queens University of Charlotte.