ONLINE Micro-Portraits and Memoirs
6 weeks | Thursdays | Begins October 15, 2026
9am-11am PT | 10am-12pm MT | 11am-1pm CT | 12pm-2pm ET | 1pm-3pm AT
Instructor: Sandra Phinney
MEMBER PRICE: $270.00
NON-MEMBER PRICE: $340.00
Writing mini-profiles of folks--family, friends, colleagues, adversaries--can be hugely rewarding. Also writing flash nonfiction memoirs about our own lives. But, where to begin? How 'bout pulling enough stories together to consider a book? Join Sandra Phinney this fall to learn how and where to mine for stories, the craft of writing short (100 words to 1000 words max.), and where to get them published. The only prerequisite is a willingness to experiment in the realm of flash nonfiction.
This is an interactive online class using the Zoom web platform.
Sandra Phinney’s stories have appeared in over 70 publications, including Nature Canada, Canadian Geographic, and the Toronto Star.
Although Sandra continues to pen a story or two for magazines and newspapers, she’s now focusing on teaching and writing books. Her fourth book was a travel memoir for Pottersfield Press titled Waking Up In My Own Backyard—Explorations in Southwest Nova Scotia. Currently, a compilation of personal essays titled BUSTED! Confessions of an Eighty-Year-Old Tree Hugger and Other True Tales of Life in Nova Scotia, will be published by Pottersfield this fall. She also has three other non-fiction books in the works.
Sandra delivers online writing workshops across Canada, focusing on various aspects of writing non-fiction in general and memoir in particular. In 2021, she was the Literary Artist-In-Residence for four weeks at the Joggins Fossil Cliffs UNESCO site. More recently, she completed a contract with the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia as a mentor in the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program.
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