Capturing a Slice of Life with Pen and Paper

There’s something special about putting your life on paper for everyone to see, Margo Hammond says.

“You would be amazed what pours out of people,” she said.

The former book editor for the St. Petersburg Times and author has been holding memoir-writing workshops in St. Petersburg, FL, where she lives, for about a year. And she'll be doing the same thing in Shorewood from 10 a.m. to noon April 14 at the Village Center, in the lower level of the .

She said she will offer a quick overview of the history of memoir writing, have attendees write down a personal experience and critique the writings at the workshop.

“Sometime they're happy, sometimes they're sad, but people have some interesting lives,” Margo says of the memoirs she often sees. “You are in a way writing down your life."

Margo said she is inspired by her mother, LaVerne Hammond, who was a Shorewood resident and started writing columns for the St. Petersburg Times at age 86.

“She started writing letters to people who had died. They were astoundingly good,” Margo said. “I learned about people I had never met from those memoirs.”

After LaVerne’s husband passed away when she was 52, she came out to St. Peterburg and attended a writers conference.

That sparked her interest and she started to write monthly about her life.

“One of the pieces was about her decision to downsize and move from Kenosha, where she had lived all her life, to a Shorewood apartment,” Margo said.

LeVerne lived across from the Shorewood Library for years, and she contributed to the Times for more than five years, until she died at age 92.

“She wrote her last piece in hospice… a letter to her new granddaughter who had just been born,” Margo said.

Margo complied all of her mother's columns into a book, she self-published in 2008 titled "Post Scripts: A Writing Life After Eighty."

And she said she now feels like it is her mission to get people to write down their lives.

“You don’t have to be a great writer, you just need to tap into that storytelling ability,” Margo said. “We are all natural storytellers.”

Margo will make a stop in Appleton on April 11 to launch the Fox Cities Book Festival with fellow book critic, Ellen Heltzel. She will also speak about her book, "Between the Covers: The Book Babes' Guide to a Woman's Reading Pleasures."

She is also working on a book highlighting creative late bloomers, like her mother.

The workshop is $25 and includes light refreshments. Call 414-847-2727 to reserve your spot.