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Pre-Conference Seminars
Something New at APH for 2008

Sheraton Hotel

Wednesday, October 29
(9:00 AM - 3:30 PM)

For an additional fee (see below), conference attendees may choose to arrive early and participate in one of two in-depth, full-day seminars…

Video Production 101: A Hands-On Seminar

Looking to get started with video awareness and skills? This is just the session for you! Join Tom Forster and another ace videographer (TBA soon!) for some hands-on experience with team assignments, where you'll enjoy an opportunity to practice the basics of video production and to learn all about the ABC’s of:

• • Equipment
• • Lighting
• • Shooting
• • Sound
• • Editing

You’ll even learn a bit about purchasing considerations and copyright law. Each participant will create a short video in a team setting with special emphasis on interviewing techniques. If you would like to practice with your own small camera, you are encouraged to bring it along.

Dawn Thurston's seminar will spark your creativity and nudge you out of writing in the same old way. Sometimes our clients want their stories told, but the information they give us in their interviews often can be pretty dry—a collection of names and dates with no life to them. How do you shape this dry data into an interesting story?

During the jam-packed, fun-filled hours of this class, you’ll learn how to write more compelling personal histories utilizing such techniques as:
• • Begin with a bang! Create hooks (compelling beginnings to chapters or stories).
• • Developing the people in your story so they become more than just names on a page.
• • Re-creating places and eras to be as they were when your subjects experienced them.
• • Incorporating emotions, demonstrating what it was like to walk in a subject’s shoes.
• • Writing skillfully about family skeletons and other sensitive issues.
• • Using conflict, humor, and suspense to keep readers turning pages.

Come ready to expand your vision of what a life story can be. Every topic will demonstrate how to enhance your narrative skills, whether you’re crafting a story from a transcribed interview, ghostwriting a client’s memoir, or writing your own personal history.

Presenter Dawn Thurston of Villa Park, California, is the co-author of Breathe Life into Your Life Story, published by Signature Books in 2007. With a BA in English and an MA in Communications, she has taught life story writing at universities in California and Utah for the last twelve years. In the process, Dawn has helped hundreds of students write and publish their personal histories.

Early Registration (July 1-31) Fee: $125
Regular Registration (Aug. 1-Sept. 15) Fee: $150
Late Registration (Sept. 16-Oct. 24) Fee: $175

Fees shown are in addition to full-time conference registration fees. If only registering to attend a pre-conference seminar, but not the entire conference, a $75 surcharge will be added to the stated seminar fee.