A life of cats. Submitted photo

Submitted photo

Elizabeth Cooke Submitted photo

Sara Beech Submitted photo

REGION — Explore the writer in you, while donating to a good cause. Join Maine Humanities Council Co-Facilitators, Elizabeth Cooke and Sara Beech, for a Saturday afternoon of art and writing to share stories. Workshops are family friendly, welcome to all ages and levels of experience. Offered three Saturdays, February 13, March 13, and April 10, from 3-4:30 p.m. A sliding scale donation is requested: $10 per session is suggested. All proceeds support Literacy Volunteers Adult Tutoring. To register for 1 session or all 3, go to our website at westernmaineliteracy.org and click on the donate button. If a financial contribution is not possible at this time, please call or email to make arrangements for participation. Email at literacyvolunteersfs@gmail.com or call 500-3131.

Elizabeth and Sara will guide participants through simple exercises to discover their inner writers and turn their personal stories into unique finished works by the end of the session.

Session 1, February 13: Outside Lives, Inside Dreams: Using Maine author Ashley Bryan’s beautiful book, Freedom Over Me, as a starting point, we will create works of art and writing around observable outsides and unseen inner lives.

Session 2, March 13: Beautiful Futures Mini-Zine: In this session we will use list-poems, art, and collage to imagine and record our dreams for a beautiful future in a tiny, shareable book form, using mini-zine formatting techniques.

Session 3, April 10: I Used To…But Now…And Some Day: We will brainstorm beginnings, middles, and ends through writing/collaging to discover ourselves in what comes next.

Facilitator Bios:

Elizabeth Cooke has collaborated with LVFSC as a Maine Humanities Council Facilitator, leading group book discussions for over 20 years. She began teaching at age 7, on ‘snow days’ when the neighborhood kids came to her house for ‘school’, where she taught AA Milne poetry and arithmetic. She became a classroom teacher for 37 years, and continues her life’s work as a writer and teacher of writing. Elizabeth still loves seeing the ‘write to discover’ miracle occur in people of all ages…along with the joy of reading and learning. Elizabeth published two works of fiction, one of nonfiction, and a new novel is in the works. She adores her dogs and cats, children and grandchildren, and did not try to teach them to write.

Sara Beech, LVFSC Administrative Assistant and Tutoring Program Coordinator since 2016, is a Maine Humanities Council Facilitator, a full time Master’s student of Community Education and Transformative Language Arts at Goddard College, and a board member of the Wilton Free Public Library. Sara has always pursued alternative education pathways. Can you believe she tried to become a Literacy Volunteers tutor at the age of 9? Sara and her children raise goats, play a variety of games, read books, and of course-write. They all love to dabble in playing musical instruments.