Deborah ShepardThe Art of Writing From Life
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Author photo: Babiche Maartens, NZ Herald
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Covid-19 Stories
This publishing opportunity is for all visitors to Deborah’s site and her course participants who wish to send a story of their experience of living through the time of coronavirus. Please write to Deborah via the contact page on this website for instructions. |
Upcoming events
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Introduction to Memoir at the Devonport Library
When: 28 February — 2 May 2022 (allowing for Easter and Anzac Days) Number of sessions: Eight sessions Mondays 6.30pm – 8.30pm Where: Devonport Library Course fee: $280 Contact: via the contact page on this website NB: As happened with the September 2021 course we move online to Zoom in alert levels 3 and 4. This medium works very well for a course of this nature. Course Description Currently we are living through uncharted times where the familiar everyday patterns of existence have been disrupted by a global pandemic. A memoir course at this time of uncertainty offers a welcome refuge and reflective space to investigate and preserve your memories by writing retrospectively about your life. Writing memoir is an engrossing and ultimately grounding activity. As you pull together the various threads of your life experience and begin to make meaning of them you realise their value and importance. There is no better time to draw on your courage and commit to starting to write the story of your life. This course is designed for people who yearn to write a record of their life. It is for those who have never written and for those who enjoy writing in other genres but haven’t yet tried memoir. Under Deborah’s guidance, and in a mutually supportive environment, this eight-week course offers the essential structure, method and themes to help the memoirist strengthen the writing voice and begin to realise the memoir project. Please see the events page of this website for further information about the course. |
Regrettably Deborah's semester one courses at the University of Auckland have been cancelled due to Covid-19. Information about semester two courses will be forthcoming later in the semester.
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Life Writing Weekend Workshop
Postponed until further notice due to Covid-19 Leeston, Canterbury We all have the capacity to write from our personal experience about the subjects that are important to us. On a life writing workshop with experienced tutor Deborah Shepard you will be introduced to techniques and triggers, memoir themes and topics that will enable you to discover your writing voice. |
News
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Landfall review of The Writing Life - The Grit that Makes the Pearl
Read Landfall's review of The Writing Life by Tasha Haines. Interview with Karen Craig for the Auckland Central Library Books and Beyond podcasts
The Writing Life was selected as one of the top ten, in the Auckland Libraries Top 100 for 2018, a list of recommended reads curated by librarians and drawn from readers’ favourite books. |
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Tribute: Ramai Rongomaitara Hayward (1916-2014)
Read Deborah’s new entry on pioneer film director Ramai Hayward for Te Ara the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography. Ramai Hayward was a pioneering documentary and feature film-maker. She trained as a photographer in the mid-1930s and had established her own studio in Auckland when she starred in Rudall Hayward’s landmark film Rewi’s last stand (1940). This was the beginning of a 34-year film-making partnership with Hayward. Ramai was the driving force behind a series of educational films in the 1950s and 1960s, and one of the first western film-makers to visit Communist China. Some of her films explored Māori society and highlighted discrimination against Māori. As a Māori woman, she was a doubly unique figure in an industry dominated by Pākehā men. Early life By her own account, Ramai Rongomaitara Te Miha was born at Pirinoa in Wairarapa on 16 November 1916, though some sources suggest she was born a year earlier. She was the daughter of Roihi Te Miha of Ngāti Kahungunu and Ngāi Tahu, and Frederick William Mawhiney, a farmer of Irish descent. The couple had a second daughter, Wikitoria (Vicky), born on 6 August 1917, two months before Frederick was killed in action in Belgium on 13 October 1917. |
AFTERGLOW: The Writing Life: Twelve New Zealand Authors by Deborah Shepard
On Thursday November 8th, Unity hosted a lunchtime discussion between author Deborah Shepard, Massey University Press publisher Nicola Legat, Dame Fiona Kidman, and Patricia Grace about Shepard’s new book The Writing Life: Twelve New Zealand Authors.
(L-R): Patricia Grace, Dame Fiona Kidman, Nicola Legat, Deborah Shepard
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Deborah discussing her writing and interviewing process.
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Patricia Grace reading a poem by Hone Tuwhare.
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Grace and Kidman signing copies of ‘The Writing Life’.
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Featured Posts
Lockdown
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The Value of attending a Writing ClassYou want to write your memoir? Discover the value of attending a Writing Class and hear past students experiences.
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Writers'
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Author photo: Babiche Maartens, NZ Herald
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About Deborah ShepardDEBORAH SHEPARD is a biographer, oral historian and teacher of memoir. She has also been a film, television and media studies lecturer at the University of Auckland. She has written entries on women filmmakers for the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, the Le Dictionnaire Universel des Creatrices, (The Universal Dictionary of Women Creators) published in Paris in 2013 and in 2014 she contributed an updated ‘Reframing Women. Gender et Cinéma en Aotearoa Nouvelle-Zélande (1999-2014) to a special issue on gender, globalisation and film for the transdisciplinary, French-based and UNESCO-supported journal Diogenes.
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Her major publications include Her Life’s Work: Conversation with Five New Zealand Women (2009), Between the Lives: Partners in Art (2005), Reframing Women: a History of New Zealand Film (2000) and Giving Yourself to Life: A Journal of Pain, Hope and Renewal (2015).
Her new book The Writing Life based on oral history interviews with twelve of New Zealand’s most acclaimed and admired authors is due out on 6 November. Deborah teaches introductory and master classes in memoir, biography and journal writing at the University of Auckland’s Public Programmes and is a life writing mentor for the New Zealand Society of Authors. She lives in Auckland.
Her new book The Writing Life based on oral history interviews with twelve of New Zealand’s most acclaimed and admired authors is due out on 6 November. Deborah teaches introductory and master classes in memoir, biography and journal writing at the University of Auckland’s Public Programmes and is a life writing mentor for the New Zealand Society of Authors. She lives in Auckland.