Discover how archival materials can breathe life into personal narratives in this hands-on writing workshop. Award-winning writer Tess Scholfield-Peters guides participants through the delicate art of weaving historical documents, photographs, letters, and ephemera into compelling memoir and life writing. The session begins with a brief conversation with Tess, offering insights into her own creative process before transitioning into the interactive workshop portion. Whether you're working with family archives, institutional collections, or forgotten treasures, you'll learn techniques to transform these fragments of the past into rich, layered storytelling. This workshop offers practical approaches to research, ethical considerations when writing about others, and methods for balancing historical accuracy with narrative voice. Perfect for writers of all levels interested in exploring the intersection of personal history and archival discovery.

Tess Scholfield-Peters is a writer and academic at UTS, teaching across the Creative Writing and Communications programs. Tess has won an international prize for her academic research as well as a National Library of Australia summer scholarship for her research project: From Berlin to the Bush: Jewish Youth in Rural Australia 1939. Her PhD titled For Those Who Cannot Speak: new and ethical expressions of Holocaust remembrance by the third generation would become her first book, a work of narrative nonfiction titled Dear Mutzi: a story of love, escape and finding the forgotten which was published by NLA Publishing in June 2024. Tess lives and works in Sydney-Eora and is working on her second book.

We thank our partner National Library of Australia Publishing for their support.