Colorado military veterans interested in writing about their experiences are invited to register for a writing workshop offered by the University of Colorado at Boulder's Continuing Education and Professional Studies program.
The 10-week course titled "Tell Your Story: A Writing Workshop for Those Who Have Served in the Military" will meet Wednesday evenings from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. from Sept. 10 to Nov. 12. The class is free to veterans.
CU-Boulder instructor Juliet Wittman, an award-winning author who teaches in CU-Boulder's Program for Writing and Rhetoric, will lead the workshop.
"I think living through an experience as large and complex as serving in a war zone must really change your sense of reality and what life means," Wittman said. "I believe that if you can put words down on paper, you can eventually over time work your way through the things you saw, thought and felt. When you've done that, I think you have at some level put your life back in order."
During the workshop participants will do in-class exercises, keep journals and work with dreams, memories and meditations with the goal of developing their ideas and images into short written pieces. They also will provide feedback and encouragement for each other.
"When we opened our Veterans' Affairs Office here on campus last fall, one of the things we wanted to do was offer peer counseling and support groups to our veterans," said retired U.S. Marine Corps Col. Greg Akers, director of CU-Boulder's Office of Veterans' Affairs. "This class is one way for veterans to offer support to each other while writing about their experiences."
Wittman, a breast cancer survivor, wrote an award-winning book about her personal battle and victory against the disease.
"It took me about a year to begin writing about it, but I found that making a manuscript out of that experience helped me to deal with it," she said.
When it comes to writing, veterans' experiences are a topic that interest most people, and there are few topics that lend themselves to writing more than war, according to Wittman.
"Great war writing is great writing," she said. "It has everything, including grandeur, pettiness, boredom, terror, fear, anger, desperation and even laughter."
Wittman reviews memoirs regularly for The Washington Post. She won a Colorado Book Award for her book "Breast Cancer Journal: A Century of Petals" and was named a finalist for the National Book Award. She has taught in CU-Boulder's Program for Writing and Rhetoric for eight years.
The course is being offered through a partnership between Boulder American Legion Post 10, the city of Boulder and CU-Boulder's Continuing Education and Professional Studies program.
For more information about the writing seminar contact Wittman at juliet.wittman@colorado.edu or 303-735-4772. For more information about the Continuing Education and Professional Studies program visit .