Who am I to tell my story? And how can we grant ourselves permission to write the stories we’re compelled to tell when we've been told we shouldn't?
Without fail, almost every writer—new or experienced—has faced dire questions of permission and story ownership: there is something that they want to write about, that they need to write about. Yet: they can’t. They have been warned not to. They might be paralyzed with shame, threatened with shunning, chastened into silence. Even if what they need to write about has defined them and their worldviews.
But what if they did? What if 
you
 did?
After writing three critically-acclaimed memoirs and a decade of teaching memoir workshops at every level, Elissa Altman has helped students face the elephant in every writer’s room: how to craft the stories that are most vital to them despite the voices that have told them not to. 
Permission
 is a master course, not only on how to craft memoir, but how to begin and keep going when you’ve been told you can’t, and how to give yourself permission to transcend the fear that keeps vital stories from being written.
We are the storytelling species; this book will inspire and guide all creatives to a place of transformation, of freedom from the constraints of shame and fear in all their forms, and to the understanding and recognition of the ethics of story-making, art-making, truth-telling, and creative soul-saving.
Thursday, May 8 at 7:00 PM (doors 6:30 PM), approximately 75 minutes with an audience Q&A.
Presented by 
Mechanics' Hall
, 
PRINT: A Bookstore
, & 
The Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance
.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Elissa Altman
 is the award-winning author of the memoirs 
Motherland
, 
Treyf
, and 
Poor Man’s Feast
, and the bestselling essay substack of the same name. A longtime editor, she has been a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, Connecticut Book Award, Maine Literary Award, and the Frank McCourt Memoir Prize, and her work has appeared in publications including 
Orion
, 
The Bitter Southerner
, 
On Being, O: The Oprah Magazine
, LitHub, the 
Wall Street Journal
, 
The Guardian
, and the 
Washington Post
, where her column, “Feeding My Mother,” ran for a year. Altman writes and speaks widely on the intersection of permission, storytelling, and creativity, and has appeared live on the TEDx stage and at the Public Theater in New York. She teaches the craft of memoir at Fine Arts Work Center, Maine Writers & Publishers, Kripalu, Truro Center for the Arts, Rutgers Community Writing Workshop, and beyond, and lives in Connecticut with her wife, book designer Susan Turner.
Gibson
 Fay-LeBlanc
’s first collection of poems, 
Death of a Ventriloquist,
 won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by 
Poets & Writers 
as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. His second book, 
Deke Dangle Dive
, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. Gibson’s poems have appeared in magazines including 
The New Republic, Tin House, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, 
and 
Orion. 
With graduate degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, Gibson has taught writing at conferences, schools and universities including Fordham, Haystack, and University of Southern Maine, and helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family.
PARKING & TRANSPORTATION
Mechanics’ Hall is located at 519 Congress Street. Our main entrance is between Loquat Shop and the Art Mart. The Greater Portland Metro’s Congress & Casco Street Stop is directly in front of our building, served by 
routes 1, 7, 8, and 9B
.
Parking is available at the 
Arts District Garage
, which has entrances on Casco and Brown Street, with a rate of $5 per hour. Metered street parking is available on Congress, Casco, Cumberland, Free Street, and other nearby streets. Free hourly street parking is available between Parris and Alder Street.
ACCESSIBILITY
To enter our building, patrons will need to navigate a single step or use a 
modular wheelchair ramp
. There is a wheelchair-accessible elevator to the third-floor ballroom.
If you have a particular accessibility question or request please contact us at 
programming@mainemechanics.org
.
Information Source: Mechanics' Hall (Maine) | eventbrite

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